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MAKING THE MOST OF ONE'S MIND 
A GUIDE FOR ALL STUDENTS. BY JOHN ADAMS 



MAKING THE MOST 
OF ONE'S MIND 



By 

JOHN ADAMS, M.A., B.Sc, LL.D. 

Protestor of Education in the University of London 




HODDER & STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



Copyright, 1915, by 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



FEB 19 1915 



f^/&9 



'CI.A391778 

• / 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I 

Taking Oneself in Hand . i 

CHAPTER II 
Plan of Campaign 35 

CHAPTER III 
Manipulation of the Mem p ry ._—•«■—- " . . 59 

CHAPTER IV 
Nature of Study and Thinking ... 83 

CHAPTER V 
Mode of Study . ... no 



Contents 



PAGE 

CHAPTER VI 
Reading 153 



CHAPTER VII 
Text-Books and Books of Reference. . 178 

CHAPTER VIII 
Listening and Note-Making . . . .213 

CHAPTER IX 
Constructive Study in Translation and 

Essay-Writing 240 

CHAPTER X 
Examinations. 364 



VI 



Making the Most 
of One's Mind. 



CHAPTER I 



TAKING ONESELF IN HAND 

AMONG the Romans of the old days when a boy- 
had finished his education, and was regarded 
as fit to enter upon the responsibilities of life, he 
cast aside the scarlet-bordered gown that boys then 
wore, discarded the disc of gold, silver, or leather 
that hung from his neck, and put on the plain black 
gown, the toga virilis, that was worn by men. In 
those days this entrance upon manhood was taken 
seriously, and was accompanied by a certain amount 
of ceremony. The boy was led to feel that his new 
estate made heavy demands upon him. No doubt 
it meant the removal of certain restraints. Indeed, 
the manly gown was sometimes called the toga 
liberior, the gown of greater freedom. But it also 
implied the imposition of new responsibilities. Orig- 

[i] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

inally the donning of the toga virilis meant the 
liability to military service, for at first the gown was 
not assumed till the completion of the seventeenth 
year. Later in the history of Rome it was assumed 
at an earlier age. Indeed, the age varied consider- 
ably, but it may be safely said that the scarlet- 
bordered robe was not discarded before the four- 
teenth birthday, nor retained much beyond the 
sixteenth. 

This variation is natural, for it is not in human 
nature to become a responsible person at any definite 
age fixed beforehand. Boys develop at different 
rates : some are ready at fourteen for the manly 
gown, while others might fittingly retain the scarlet 
border till well over twenty. After all, the gown 
was only a symbol. What it signified was that the 
boy had taken over his life into his own hands. He 
was henceforth to be, as the saying runs, "his own 
master," though, as a matter of fact, he was less free 
from outward restraint than our modern boys. 

We have no ceremony when we don our first coat 
with tails. In truth, we greatly prefer that no notice 
should be taken of the innovation, that our friends, 
in fact, should be considerate enough to pretend that 
we had been dressed in that way all along. Indeed, 
our gradual and unostentatious adoption of the garb 
of manhood represents more truly than the Roman 
method the process of coming to what are called 
years of discretion. No doubt there comes a time in 
most lives when the person is aware that he takes 

[2] 



A Guide for All Students 

himself in hand, when he assumes the responsibility 
for the ordering of his own life. But in many cases 
the person cannot name any particular time at which 
the act could be said to have been performed, and 
we know that, after all, the assumption of the manly 
gown symbolizes only the completion of a process 
that has been going on for a long time. 

This process js a very interesting one and may be 
called, in a general way, reflection. It implies the 
turning back of the mind upon itself. We are 
familiar with those verbs that are called reflexive. 
Their characteristic is that the action begun by the 
subject returns back upon that subject. The subject 
and the object of these verbs are one. If I wash 
myself, there is only one person occupied in the 
process. The / that washes is the same as the myself 
that is washed. It is true that in this case it may be 
said that one part of the self, say the hands, washes 
another part of the self, say the face. But when we 
pass from physical actions this separation cannot be 
made. When I say I blame myself, it is not one 
part of me that blames another. It would appear that 
the whole of me blames the whole of me. When 
Cranmer, at the stake, thrust his right hand first 
into the flames because it had signed the document 
of which he was ashamed, we feel that there is 
something wrong with the implied judgment. We 
cannot separate the responsibility on a physical 
basis. The whole Cranmer was at fault. 

Yet there is a genuine difficulty implied in all 
C3] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

reflexive action. Children can be greatly puzzled 
by such a sentence as "Says I to myself." Are there 
two persons, or only one? How can a conversation 
be carried on with only one person present? Even 
grown-up people have to recognize two aspects of 
the self. / as speaker say something to myself as 
hearer. There is only one self, but it is acting in 
two different ways. In one respect it is active, in 
another it is passive. 

Now, at very early stages of life the child does 
not quite realize the extent of his "self." He will 
speak of himself in the third person. "Johnny 
wants a ride in Johnny's coach." By and by he 
begins to perceive that the Johnny he is talking 
about is different from every other Johnny. He has 
more interest in this particular Johnny than in all 
the remaining Johnnies in the world. He begins to 
realize that this Johnny who has the coach and other 
attractive things is a specially interesting person on 
his own account, apart from the things he possesses. 
When a child begins to pay special attention to this 
strange Johnny and to compare him with other 
children, he has reached the beginning of the con- 
ception of self. But there are here obviously two 
aspects of the self: the self that examines, and the 
self that is examined- These two aspects are given 
different names. The examining self is called the 
subjective self, and the self examined is called the 
objective. When the subjective self appears for the 
first time it finds the objective self already existing. 

[4] 



A Guide for All Students 

Johnny has had many rides in his coach before he 
begins to turn back upon himself and find out what 
sort of person he is. Thus it would appear that the 
objective self precedes the subjective, but all that 
this means is that at a certain stage the self "comes 
to itself," or realizes the meaning of this reflexive 
process that is implied in selfhood. 

All these considerations are of great importance 
to those who wish to take themselves in hand and 
make the most of themselves. If the subjective self, 
when it takes stock of the objective, is not satisfied 
with what it finds, it may set about dealing with that 
objective self in order to improve it. This is the 
beginning of real personal education. It is true that 
a schoolboy may have been at school and therefore 
undergoing a certain kind of education long before 
he realizes the two aspects of the self. But his 
genuine personal education does not begin till he 
himself takes a hand in it, with some appreciation of 
what it all means. Education is a process in which 
there are always two poles, an active and a passive. 
At school the teacher is obviously at the active pole, 
the pupil at the passive. The teacher is said to edu- 
cate, the pupil to be educated. Though the pupil 
is said to be passive, it does not mean that he is 
necessarily idle, or that he does nothing. In the two 
words employer and employe we have a similar 
distinction. So far as employing is concerned, the 
employer is active and the employee is passive, 
though so far as work is concerned, the employer 

[5] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

may sit in an office and do very little, while the 
employee may be carting coals all day. So far as 
education is concerned, the teacher is active and 
may be called the educator, the pupil is passive and 
might be called the educatee, but is better named the 
educand. With an ordinary thoughtless schoolboy 
who just does his daily work as prescribed by the 
teacher, we have a case in which the teacher is all 
educator, and the pupil all educand. But wherever 
we find a pupil who takes an intelligent interest in 
his education, that is, who not only does his daily 
tasks but understands why he has to do them, we 
have a case in which the pupil is, to some extent, an 
educator as well as an educand. 

In the lower classes at school the pupils are almost 
entirely educands. In the upper classes the better 
pupils gradually begin to take a hand in their own 
education, and become more and more educators of 
themselves. The progress of a really good pupil 
through a school is a process of gradually eliminat- 
ing the need for an external educator. This does 
not mean that the teacher becomes of less use in 
the higher classes, but that his use is of a different 
kind. It has been said by a cynical Frenchman that 
a cat does not caress us, but only caresses itself 
against us. In the same way, the really good pupil 
educates himself against his teacher. In other words, 
he uses the teacher as a means to aid in educating 
himself. At the early stages the teacher directs the 
whole of the activities of the pupil, at the final stage 

[6] 



A Guide for All Students 

the pupil should direct his own activities, and use 
the teacher as a means of using these activities to the 
best advantage. The duty of the teacher is clear. 
Thackeray tells us somewhere that the secret of 
wooing is to make oneself indispensable to one's 
mistress. The teacher's duty as educator is exactly 
the opposite. His aim should be to make himself 
dispensable. No doubt, as teacher, he may still be 
of the greatest possible service, but as educator he 
has succeeded only when his occupation is gone. 

You who read this book are by that very fact 
proved to be at least well on the way to becoming 
your own educator. The book, to be sure, may 
have been put into your hands by some one else, who, 
to that extent, is your educator. But on the other 
hand, so far as you are interested in finding out 
what the book has to say that will help you to man- 
age your studies better, you are your own educator 
and are using the book as an instrument. You will 
notice a certain parallelism between the child coming 
to a knowledge of the difference between the sub- 
jective and objective selves, and the pupil's coming 
to take a part in his own education. In both cases 
there is a turning back of the mind upon itself, a 
considering of the whole position of our relation to 
others, and of our possibilities. When the educand 
becomes his own educator, it is really a case of the 
subjective self taking the objective self in hand and 
determining to make of it something that it was not 
before. This implies some sort of notion of the 

[7] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

aim of education. It has to be remembered that the 
aim of the State in education may be one thing and 
the aim of the individual another. No doubt, look- 
ing at the matter from the loftiest standpoint the 
two aims will be found to coincide. But in the 
meantime you who read this book are primarily 
interested in your own education. You want to 
make the best use of your opportunities, in the legi- 
timate desire to make of yourselves the best of 
which you are capable. 

This aim is very widely recognized to be the 
highest aim of education, and it is usually repre- 
sented by the word self-realization. It is generally 
admitted that the educator's object is to secure the 
self-realization of the pupil. Some young people 
prefer another form of this ideal, represented by 
the term self-expression. Occasionally the two 
terms are used as if they were synonymous, but 
when they are distinguished from one another, as 
they ought to be, the higher ideal of the two is cer- 
tainly self-realization. If they are to be marked off 
from one another, self-expression would seem to 
imply that there is a self already in existence, a 
ready-made self, whose only need is for expression. 
This ideal demands, above everything, that the self 
should be free from restraint. The demand of those 
who hold this ideal is that they should be free to 
lead their own life, to express what is in them, to 
be their true selves. So far as it is opposed to 
hypocrisy, and favours the honest expression of 

[3] 



A Guide for All Students 

our whole nature, the ideal is all right. But every- 
thing depends upon the kind of self that is being 
expressed. The theory takes it for granted that this 
self is worthy of expression. 

The self-realization theory, on the other hand, 
implies that education is to be a process in which 
the possibilities of the self are to be developed. But 
these possibilities are for evil as well as for good. 
The purpose of education must be to foster the good 
potentialities of the self, and to stunt the evil. It 
may be said that to do this is to cramp the freedom 
of the individual soul, and it is the perception of 
this danger that gives to the self-expression view 
its power over the public mind. But those who 
favour self-realization do not propose to impose upon 
the self from without something entirely foreign to 
its nature. All that is proposed is to make of the 
self the best of which it is capable, by develop- 
ing and fostering those qualities in it that make 
for good, while repressing those that make for 
evil. 

But whatever may be said about the restrictive 
tendency of the self-realization theory as exemplified 
in the ordinary education by an external teacher, 
there can be no objections on this score in the case 
of those who are seeking to educate themselves. 
Obviously the very fact that the self has become 
its own educator is a proclamation of the fact that 
the self is having perfect freedom in directing its 
own development. Yet this very introduction of 

[9] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

the notion of freedom calls up a point of contrast 
between the self-realization and the self-expression 
ideals. Self-expression is always emphasizing its 
demands for perfect freedom. There must be no 
restraint. The self must be left perfectly free to 
act according to its own dictates. But the self- 
realization view accepts limitations. In order that 
our highest ideals may be reached, it is often neces- 
sary to submit ourselves to many restraints. The 
highest freedom is gained by subordinating ourselves 
voluntarily to what we regard as wholesome restric- 
tions. All the religious paradoxes, such as "in Thy 
service we find perfect freedom," are based upon a 
recognition of this need for voluntary subordination 
of our natural desires. 

With all this talk of self, there is a certain danger. 
When the distinction between the subjective and the 
objective self dawns upon the child, he is interested, 
but he seldom talks about it. His discovery affects 
his attitude towards life, but not always as the result 
of a deliberately thought-out plan. At a later stage 
it is certainly desirable that the educand should con- 
sider what is going on within his soul. Self-exam- 
ination is necessary to intelligent living, to say noth- 
ing of education. But there is the danger of living 
too much within ourselves. To be conscious of our 
self, to know how we stand in relation to other 
selves and to the outer world is of the utmost value 
to us. Indeed, "coming to self-consciousness" is 
the technical expression used by certain philosophers 
[10] ' 



A Guide for All Students 

to mean the highest point to which human thought 
can attain. Yet the very expression "self -conscious- 
ness" is sometimes used to indicate a quite unwhole- 
some state of mind. A person who in a drawing- 
room is said to be self-conscious is one who thinks 
too much about himself and about what other people 
think of him. It is self -consciousness carried to 
excess and amounts to a disease. The introduction 
of consciousness into certain of our ordinary acts is 
often accompanied by a loss of power to do them as 
well as usual. Running down a long flight of steps 
is an easy matter if we think nothing about it, but 
if on the way we begin to consider what we are 
doing, we suddenly find ourselves in difficulties, and 
are quite apt to stumble. We often say that we 
cannot do certain things when there are a great many 
people looking on. The things are easy enough in 
themselves, and when we are by ourselves we do 
them without thinking much about them. But when 
we are aware that we are being watched we begin to 
think about how we are doing our work, and con- 
fusion follows. 

If the introduction of consciousness into a process 
has this disturbing effect, it would appear that it 
is something to be avoided. Indeed, a distinguished 
French psychologist, Gustave Le Bon, adopts as the 
motto of a book called The Psychology of Education 
the words, "Education consists in causing the con- 
scious to pass into the unconscious." Obviously 
this cannot mean that to be unconscious is prefer- 
[ii] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

able to being conscious. Consciousness in itself is 
essential if we are to claim the rank of human beings 
at all. The trouble is that it is sometimes wrongly 
distributed. Misplaced consciousness is a thing to 
be carefully avoided. The place of consciousness is 
in dealing with fresh things, or with things that 
have an immediate interest for us at any particular 
moment. When we are learning any new thing we 
must be conscious of it. We are painfully aware of 
every motion we make, for example, in learning to 
ride a bicycle. But as we go on and acquire skill 
we cease to notice each individual action, and con- 
fine ourselves to the general feeling resulting from 
balancing ourselves. All our actions are controlled 
by the brain. Now the brain, in a general way, 
may be regarded as made up of two parts, an upper 
and a lower. Speaking still in a very general way, 
it may be said that the upper brain is the seat of 
consciousness, while the lower brain has the control 
of our activities that are carried on out of con- 
sciousness. When we are learning to do anything 
we may be said to depend on our upper brain ; when 
we have acquired such skill that we do not need to 
think about the details of what we are doing, we 
may be said to work with our lower brain. Thus it 
is not unreasonable to say that we run up and down 
stairs under the direction of the lower brain without 
calling in the upper brain at all. Everything we 
can do without consideration falls into the lower 
brain's department. Thus we do most of our spell- 

[12] 



A Guide for All Students 

ing with the lower brain. It is only when a diffi- 
culty arises that the upper brain is called in for a 
consultation. 

You are not to take all this physiology too liter- 
ally. In one sense it is true that the brain always 
acts as a whole, yet it is sufficiently true for our 
purpose to accept the position that the upper brain 
is in the position of the head of a great commercial 
firm who sits in his office and directs all the new 
and important parts of the business, and leaves all 
the routine to be carried on by his subordinates. He 
may be said to be unconscious of all that is going 
on in the different departments, and yet from his 
place at the top he is the guiding influence that keeps 
everything going. If anything goes wrong any- 
where in the business the head, if he is efficient, at 
once becomes aware of it and gives it his attention. 
In the same way the upper brain attends to all the 
new and difficult mental and physical processes, and 
relegates to the lower brain the looking after all the 
ordinary or routine parts of our living. If anything 
goes wrong anywhere, however, the upper brain is at 
once aware of it, and takes things in hand till it is 
safe to turn them over again to the routine-controlling 
lower brain. 

Real living, living as opposed to mere existence, 
has been said to be the application of old principles 
to new cases. It is in the upper brain that we carry 
on our real living. When we are educating ourselves 
we keep on passing things from the upper brain 
[13] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

down to the lower. The more things that we can 
leave to the lower brain the better. What is wanted 
is that the upper brain should be left to attend to 
the really new and important things. Were it not 
for this power of passing on things to the lower 
brain it would be impossible to make any intellectual 
progress. We would be all the time occupied with 
thinking out every individual action that our daily 
life demands. As it is, the great bulk of our living 
is carried on in the lower-brain department. The 
upper brain is busy all the time dealing with new 
matter, selecting what is useful, rejecting what is 
hurtful, and passing on the useful to the care of the 
lower brain. Once an activity has been passed into 
the lower-brain department it always implies waste 
if it is called back into the upper-brain or conscious- 
ness department, unless something has gone wrong, 
or unless for a definite reason the upper brain 
wants to examine the activity in relation to some- 
thing else. 

Consciousness is always being turned in some 
direction or other. The danger is that it may be 
too frequently turned back upon itself. Self- 
examination is necessary, and no really good work 
can be done unless we keep ourselves well informed 
about ourselves. But there is danger in keeping 
ourselves too much under our own searchlight. Too 
little introspection, as this process of self-examina- 
tion is called, results in a dull and unintelligent 
personality. But too much attention to the self leads 
[14] 



A Guide for All Students 

to the morbid state that we have seen is known as 
self-consciousness. This peculiarly unpleasant state 
amounts to a vice, but it has to be remembered that 
it is an intellectual vice, rather than a moral one. 
The more aggressive form known as selfishness is 
marked by as keen a sense of the self, but in a 
different connexion. The selfish person is saved 
from excessive attention to the self by the need to 
concentrate upon the things that he wants to get in 
the interests of that self. He is not so much con- 
cerned about what he is, or what people think he is, 
as about what he can get for himself. 

Intellectual selfishness comes as a state inter- 
mediate between self-consciousness and ordinary 
selfishness. It may be called self- reference, and can 
be observed easily in almost any conversation. We 
are all very much inclined to respond to every re- 
mark made to us, by a mere statement of how the 
thing affects us. Instead of carrying on the train 
of thought suggested by the remark of our friend, 
we are apt to tell him the train of thought his words 
have suggested to us. Our friend talks about his 
things and we talk about ours. The conversation 
falls into two more or less independent parts. There 
is a story about an old Irishwoman of a happy turn 
of mind who admitted that she had only two teeth 
in her head, but added "Thank God, they meet!" 
Too many of the conversations one hears in ordinary 
life consist of two parts that do not meet. One man 
says : "Had it not been for the dogged perseverance 
[15] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

of Smith, the boat would never have been brought 
to land." His friend replies : ''Talking of dogs, my 
neighbour has some young puppies that make my 
life miserable with their yelpings." This crude form 
of self-reference is not very difficult to avoid, if 
only we have an average amount of good feeling. 
But the deeper form of morbid self-consciousness is 
not so easy to escape. 

It is indeed the besetting sin of the man who 
takes his own education in hand. It is so right and 
necessary that he should take stock of himself regu- 
larly, that he is very apt to slide into the vice without 
being aware of it. Yet the results of really honest 
self-examination are often so disillusioning as to give 
little encouragement to excessive self-esteem. In 
any case, it is obviously necessary for you to get 
as good a knowledge of your own powers as possible, 
if you are going to take up seriously the task of self- 
realization. In order to make of yourself the best 
of which your self is capable you must find out all 
you can about the nature of that self. One of the 
Seven Wise Men of Greece justified his place among 
the seven by a saying that is one of the most quoted 
of the multitude of saws that have come down to us 
from those old times. When Solon proclaimed his 
famous "Know thyself," he gave a piece of advice 
that is always sound, but is of special value to the 
young, since they are in a position to apply the knowl- 
edge of themselves that they may acquire. When 
the proverb tells us that man is either a fool or a 
[16] 



A Guide for All Students 

physician at forty, it implies that mere experience 
by that age ought to have given us such a knowledge 
of our physical constitution as will enable us to 
regulate it wisely. But if the knowledge could have 
been acquired in the teens it would have enabled us 
to make applications that might have prevented evils 
instead of merely enabling us to do something to 
remedy them. In order to know ourselves it is 
necessary to carry on deliberately the sort of vague 
and unsystematic examination of ourselves that we 
saw took place when the subjective self set about 
investigating the objective self. 

No harm comes from an examination of our 
physical powers such as we make when we consider 
whether we should go in for this or that form of 
game. We have to find what sort of "wind" we 
have got, how far we can trust our eye in estimating 
distances and speeds, whether our hand responds 
easily and rapidly to the suggestions conveyed by 
the eye. Similarly in matters of study it need have 
no evil results when we set about testing our native 
powers in order that we may be able to adopt an 
intelligent line of action in planning out and execut- 
ing our schemes of self-realization. 

In order that you may have some sort of guidance 
in the personal stocktaking that is essential to a 
proper appraisement of your power as a student, I 
fall back on a book called The Schoolmaster. It was 
published in 1570, its author being Roger Ascham, 
a famous Elizabethan teacher who was concerned in 
[17] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

the education of Lady Jane Grey and of Elizabeth 
herself. In his book he considers the qualities that 
are necessary to success as a student, and in his turn 
he falls back upon what Plato says in his great work 
known as The Republic. In the seventh book of The 
Republic Plato uses seven words that ought to be 
applicable to every one who is selected for the highest 
training. Ascham takes these seven words and ex- 
plains what they demand from the student. I re- 
produce them here so that you may see how far 
you meet the requirements of this exacting old 
schoolmaster. 

Rv<pvrig (Euphues) : "Is he that is apt by goodness 
of wit and appliable by readiness of will to learning." 
Ascham goes on to demand under this head a sweet 
and strong voice, a comely face, goodly stature and 
a commanding presence. 

Mv^fiov (Mnemon) : "Good of memory, a special 
part of the first note, Euphues, and a mere benefit 
of nature, yet it is so necessary for learning ... as 
without it all other gifts of nature do small service 
to learning." 

Oi/lo^afofe (Philomathes) : "Given to learning; 
for though a child have all the gifts of nature at wish, 
and perfection of memory at will, yet if he have not 
a special love to learning, he shall never attain to 
much learning." 

QiXonovoq (Philoponos) : "Is he that hath a lust 
to labour and a will to take pains. For if a child 
have all the benefits of nature, with perfection of 
[18] 



A Guide for All Students 

memory, love, like and praise learning never so 
much, yet if he be not of himself painful, he shall 
never attain unto it." 

<£>i?iYixoog (Philekoos) : "He that is glad to hear 
and learn of another. For otherwise he shall stick 
with great trouble, where he might go easily forward ; 
and also catch hardly a very little by his own toil, 
when he might gather quickly a good deal by another 
man's teaching." 

TiYitYitixoc, (Zetetikos) : "He that is naturally bold 
to ask any question, desirous to search out any doubt, 
not ashamed to learn of the meanest, not afraid to 
go to the greatest, until he be perfectly taught and 
fully satisfied." 

c&iXsrtcuvog (Philepainos) : "He that loveth to be 
praised for well-doing at his father or master's hand. 
A child of this nature will earnestly love learning, 
gladly labour for learning, willingly learn of other, 
boldly ask any doubt." 1 

Quintilian, in his book on Oratory also gives a few 
of the points that are essential to success in study. 
He puts in the forefront memory and imitation, but 
he also lays great stress on the last quality that 
Ascham mentions, love of praise. "Give me," says 
Quintilian, 2 "the boy whom praise stimulates, whom 
honour delights, who weeps when he is unsuccessful. 
His powers must be cultivated under the influence 
of ambition; reproach will sting him to the quick; 

1 The Schoolmaster (Arber's edition), pp. 38-42. 
i Institutiones Oratories, Book 1, Chapter III, s. 6. 

[19] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

honour will incite him; and in such a boy I shall 
never be apprehensive of indifference." 

Quintilian is a little doubtful about boys who learn 
easily at the beginning. He thinks they are inclined 
to be impudent, and incidentally he shows that he is 
not so keen on "zetetikos" as is Ascham. Still, the 
English schoolmaster too has his doubts about the 
quick learner. He goes out of his way to distinguish 
between what he calls hard wits and quick wits, and 
it is not difficult to see that he has a bias in favour of 
the hard kind. This is how he describes them : 

"Hard wits be hard to receive, but sure to keep : painful 
without weariness, heedful without wavering, constant with- 
out newfangleness ; bearing heavy things though not lightly, 
yet willingly; enduring hard things though not easily, yet 
deeply, and so come to that perfectness of learning in the 
end, that quick wits, seem in hope, but do not in deed, or 
else very seldom, ever attain unto." 1 

This distinction between the two kinds of wits 
leads to another that is worthy of your attention in 
estimating your qualities. We are all familiar with 
the word temperament, and are aware that people 
often excuse themselves for certain irregularities on 
the ground that they are the outcome of tempera- 
ment. We hear a great deal about the artistic tem- 
perament and its vagaries, and many people wonder 
what is meant exactly by this and other tempera- 
ments. In a very general way temperament may be 
described as the physical basis of character. So far 

*The Schoolmaster, p. 35. 
[20] 



A Guide for All Students 

as our character or disposition is determined by the 
nature or state of our bodies, it may be said to show 
the effect of temperament. The old physiologists 
had the theory that the state of the body had a direct 
and specific effect upon mental states. To some 
degree the view is still held, but in a very different 
way from that of the ancient doctors with their crude 
knowledge of anatomy and physiology. 

Tern per amentum, in Latin, means a mixing in due 
proportion, and what the old doctors thought of was 
the mixing of certain fluids in the body. There was 
first of all the blood, then the colourless lymph, next 
the bile, and lastly a particularly virulent kind of bile 
called the black bile. According as one or other of 
these fluids or ''humours" got the upper hand in the 
body, did the person belong to one or other of the 
four recognized temperaments — the sanguine, the 
phlegmatic (or lymphatic), the choleric, the melan- 
cholic. Certain qualities were assumed to belong to 
each of these temperaments. The characteristics of 
the sanguines are love of movement, vivacity, light- 
heartedness, hopefulness, rashness, impatience. The 
phlegmatics are marked by slowness of movement, 
dullness, incapacity for sustained effort, placidity, 
lack of fuss. The cholerics show ambition, stub- 
bornness, love of work, courage; while the marks 
of the melancholies are depression, sadness, dark- 
sidedness, reflectiveness, and humility. You need 
not trouble overmuch to determine which of these 
temperaments can claim you for its own, since we 

[21] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

have all got touches of all of the temperaments, and 
we sometimes seem to pass from one to the other 
according to certain changes in our health. Indeed, 
a distinguished German psychologist, Professor 
Lotze, holds that we all pass through the whole of 
the temperaments in the course of our ordinary life: 
we begin as sanguines in childhood, pass on to the 
melancholic stage during youth, become cholerics in 
our mature years, and end up as phlegmatics. 

There is, however, another classification of tem- 
peraments that is more worthy of your attention. 
According to the rapidity with which we respond to 
stimuli we are classed as sensories or motors. The 
distinction is made on a basis of nerve reaction, into 
which we need not enter here. It is enough to note 
that the sensory temperament is marked by a relative 
slowness of response. People who are sensories are 
inclined not to respond at once to any suggestion, but 
to take it into consideration and decide upon it at a 
later stage. The motors, on the other hand, are 
inclined to respond by action at once. For them 
knowing is but the vestibule of doing. They jump 
to conclusions. An attempt has been made to corre- 
late these temperaments with sex and to show that 
women as a whole are motors, while men as a whole 
are sensories. But, if true at all, this generalization 
is true only in a very limited degree. It appears 
that at school age there may be something in it, and 
that this may account for the bad character boys 
have as compared with girls of the same age in the 

[22] 



A Guide for All Students 

lower parts of the school. At the early stages boys 
are certainly more backward than girls, but in the 
higher classes at school this distinction no longer 
holds. 

It is worth your while making up your mind 
whether you are a sensory or a motor, as it may 
enable you to compare yourself more usefully than 
you otherwise could with your fellows, and to deter- 
mine more wisely how to treat yourself as a student. 
If you find yourself markedly sensory it may be 
worth your while to try to speed up your decisions, 
while if you suspect yourself of being markedly 
motor you may have to cultivate the habit of sus- 
pending judgment, not to speak of action. 

There are other qualities of your mental equip- 
ment that you should know about. Memories, for 
example, differ greatly in their way of working. 
Some people have what are called verbal memories 
and retain with ease any form of words. Others 
have what may be called rational memories and retain 
easily any facts that have a cause-and-effect relation 
to each other. Some seem to remember things best 
by their relations in time, others by their relations 
in space. You should know what sort of memory 
yours is, and whether it has any peculiarities. So 
with your other powers. ' You should note whether 
you have a tendency to picture out what you read, or 
whether you prefer to get at the sense as rapidly as 
possible without making any mental pictures. Most 
people have a preferred sense, too. That is, some 
[23] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

prefer to learn through the eye, others like to learn 
through the ear, still others through the sense of 
touch. The first kind are called visuals, the second 
audiles, the third tactile s. This does not mean that 
the visuals learn only by the eye, and the audiles 
only by the ear, but that each prefers to have 
his information conveyed through his favourite 
sense. 

In practice there are three main ways of acquiring 
knowledge : observation, intercourse and reading. 
We may use our senses to discover the nature of our 
surroundings, and reason about what we observe. 
We may talk to people who know more than we do, 
and from them acquire information. Or we may 
turn to books that have been written with the express 
purpose of communicating knowledge. In observa- 
tion and intercourse we usually learn incidentally. 
By using our senses and by talking to our neighbours 
and friends, we cannot help learning something, even 
though we have not set out to acquire knowledge. 
What we learn is a sort of by-product that comes 
without being actually sought for. The mere process 
of living always implies the picking up of knowledge 
in a more or less haphazard way. We are educated 
at school, no doubt, but we are also being educated 
all the time by our ordinary course of living. The 
difference is that at school we are taken in hand by a 
person whose business it is to educate us, whereas 
in ordinary life we are educated by our surroundings 
without anyone having any special intention to act 
[24] 



A Guide for All Students 

as our educator. We are, as we say, "licked into 
shape" by the circumstances of life. 

In our deliberate attempts to acquire knowledge 
we may depend on intercourse, or we may fall back 
upon books. While we are at school the two forces, 
living intercourse and reading, are both essential 
parts of our education. But pupils differ according 
to their preferences. Some learn much more easily 
from the word of mouth instruction that they get 
from their teacher; others profit more by reading 
quietly for themselves the text-books on the different 
subjects. The first kind of pupils, when they leave 
school and still desire to carry on their studies, are 
inclined to attend lectures by preference, while the 
second rely more upon reading. Naturally the 
audiles incline to accept the lecture system, while on 
the whole the visuals prefer to get their information 
from books. But there are other matters that enter 
into the problem. The less self-reliant student natu- 
rally prefers the lessons of an actual teacher to the 
unsympathetic pages of a mere book. You have then 
to examine yourself rather carefully so as to deter- 
mine which line of study is best suited to your need. 
You must find out to which class of students you 
yourself belong. 

You will note that all these points that you are 
invited to observe about yourselves are matters of 
fact. Accordingly they should not lead you into 
temptation in respect of conceit. Indeed, if you are 
honest with yourself, and anything else is fatal to 
[25] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

success as a student, the result of your investigations 
is more likely to be depressing than otherwise. A 
careful estimate of your own powers will almost 
certainly make you appreciate defects in yourself of 
which you would otherwise have been unconscious, 
and merits in others which would under different 
circumstances have escaped your observation. All 
the same, there is undoubtedly a tendency to become 
self-conscious involved in all this. The best way in 
which this tendency may be countered is by acquir- 
ing an interest in the subject-matter of your studies. 
For a time your honest study of yourself may lead to 
a somewhat unwholesome concentration of conscious- 
ness upon yourself. But if you proceed to apply, as 
soon as possible, the knowledge you have acquired of 
yourself to the practical problems of your education, 
you will get rid of the superfluous consciousness by 
transferring it to the difficult parts of the problems 
you are studying. This looks as if you were being 
encouraged to study yourself and then forget all 
about what you have learnt. You seem to be invited 
to imitate the man in the Bible who beholds his 
natural face in a glass, "for he beholdeth himself, 
and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what 
manner of man he was." But though in the interest 
of the work of study you forget about your tempera- 
ment, your index of memory, and your preferred 
sense, you are applying all the time the results of 
your knowledge of yourself. Your knowledge is 
changed into power. You become a more skilful 
[26] 



A Guide for All Students 

self-manipulator because you know better the self to 
be manipulated. And the more skilfully you use 
this knowledge, the less the danger of your falling 
into the vice of self-consciousness. 

But this vice may take the cruder form in which 
the subject-matter of our studies acquires an undue 
importance. The amount of knowledge that we can 
acquire of the outer world is at best pitiably small, 
yet some of us become self-conscious in view of our 
attainments. We may regard the knowledge we have 
won as in itself of great commercial value, and 
accordingly gloat over our mental gain as a miser 
does over his hoard. This false point of view results 
from a wrong notion of the nature of knowledge that 
we shall deal with later. It is not very difficult to 
avoid. But the more insidious form needs all our 
care, and in spite of our best endeavours is apt to 
catch us unawares. We may regard the knowledge 
we have acquired as important enough in its way, 
but may value still more the form in which we have 
retained it. We are tempted to value it not so much 
because it is knowledge as because it is our knowl- 
edge. We become intellectually conceited, and it 
does not improve matters that we often combine 
with our conceit a knowledge that we are conceited, 
while we make a certain show of hiding our conceit. 
Plain common-sense people dislike this compound 
state of mind so much that they have gone out of 
their way to invent a special name for it. A man 
who has fallen into this vice is called a "prig," and 
[27] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

the state itself "priggishness." It is difficult to define 
a prig, but the leading idea underlying the term is a 
sort of complacent intellectual self-righteousness that 
is exceedingly unpleasant to other people. A man 
who was once asked to define the term said that he 
could do so only by comparing it with another: A 
prig is one who has too much self-respect, a bounder 
one who has too little. 

A criticism sometimes directed against the self- 
made man is that he is too proud of his maker, a 
criticism that the reader of this book should take to 
heart, since a man who seeks to educate himself is 
really one who hopes to be by and by a self-made 
man. Yet the first lesson to be learned by one who 
would educate himself is how best to use the help 
that others may give. The term self-educated is too 
frequently restricted to those who have had no help 
from others : it is too often supposed to mean a 
person who has not been able to go to either school 
or college. Some people even pride themselves upon 
their freedom from the cramping influences of a 
conventional education, and agree with the sentiment 
expressed by William Blake, the English mystic, in 
his egregious rhyme : 

"Thank God I never was sent to school, 
To be flogged into following the style of a fool." 

But, as we have seen, schools and teachers may be 
used by the pupil for his own advantage, without 
in any way sacrificing his independence. A man 
may become as much a slave to a book as to a teacher. 
[28] 



A Guide for All Students 

The really wise person uses all the means at his dis- 
posal for furthering his education. A teacher is as 
much an instrument in the hands of a self-educator 
as is a book. In point of fact, when all is said, it has 
to be admitted that all real education is self-educa- 
tion. Unless we take a hand in our own education 
we can never attain to the best possible results. 

A French teacher called Jacotot spent a great deal 
of time in showing how useless and unnecessary a 
teacher is — but he kept on teaching all the same. He 
and many others have plenty of examples to bring 
forward of distinguished men who have attained 
success without any instruction from professional 
teachers. But these brilliant men succeeded, not be- 
cause they had no instruction, but in spite of this 
lack. Let us take the evidence of the famous French 
naturalist J. Henri Fabre, when he is speaking of his 
studies in mathematics : 

"I was denied the privilege of learning with a master. I 
should be wrong to complain. Solitary study has its advan- 
tages : it does not cast you in the official mould ; it leaves you 
all your originality. Wild fruit, when it ripens, has a different 
taste from hot-house produce : it leaves on a discriminating 
pala-te a bitter-sweet flavour whose virtue is all the greater 
for the contrast. Yes, if it were in my power, I would start 
afresh, face to face with my only counsellor, the book itself, 
not always a very lucid one ; I would gladly resume my lonely 
watches, my struggles with the darkness whence, at last, a 
glimmer appears as I continue to explore it ; I should re- 
traverse the irksome stages of yore, stimulated by the one 
desire that has never failed me, the desire of learning." 1 

*The Life of the Fly, English Edition, p. 292. 
[29] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

Yet honesty compels the old naturalist to recall 
his disappointment with the mere book : 

"The book is just a book, that is to say, a set text, saying 
not a word more than it is obliged to say, exceedingly learned, 
I admit, but, alas, often obscure ! The author, it seems, wrote 
it for himself. He understood; therefore others must. Poor 
beginners, left to yourselves, you manage as best you can ! 
For you, there shall be no retracing of steps in order to 
tackle the difficulty in another way; no circuit easing the 
arduous road and preparing the passage ; no supplementary 
aperture to admit a glimmer of daylight. Incomparably 
inferior to the spoken word, which begins again with fresh 
methods of attack and is ready to vary the paths that lead to 
the open, the book says what it says and nothing more. 
Having finished its demonstration, whether you understand or 
no, the oracle is inexorably dumb. You re-read the text and 
ponder it obstinately. You pass and repass your shuttle 
through the woof of figures. Useless efforts all: the darkness 
continues. What would be needed to supply the illuminating 
ray? Often enough, a trifle, a mere word; and that word the 
book will not speak. 

"Happy is he who is guided by a master's teaching! His 
progress does not know the misery of those wearisome 
breakdowns." 1 

Here we have the case very fairly stated. There 
are advantages on both sides, which is fortunate, 
since most of us can now have the advantage of a 
teacher's help if we really want it. Most of those 
who read this book are in the position of having an 
instructor or instructors in their studies. We must 
learn how to make the best use of them. We must 
not rely upon them too much. Professor Laurie, in 

*The Life of the Fly, English Edition, p. 330. 
[30] 



A Guide for All Students 

speaking of the advantages of poor children in that 
they had to rely upon their own efforts, appealed to 
the well-to-do to make such arrangements for throw- 
ing their children on their own resources as should 
give to them "some of the advantages of the gutter." 
These are advantages easily gained by the intelligent 
student. All he has to do is to resolve to use his 
teachers only in so far as he finds it necessary to do 
so. No doubt some teachers take up an altogether 
wrong attitude towards their pupils, and the pupil 
must accordingly put the matter straight by using 
the teachers in such a way as to develop his own 
nature in the freest way possible. 

It is no part of a teacher's business to insist upon 
making his pupils like himself. It is only Deity that 
dares say: "Let us make man in our image, after 
our likeness." Most teachers are modest enough to 
recognize this, but some are not. It is the really 
good teachers who are willing that the clever pupil 
shall be clever in his own way. As we have seen, 
the true teacher attains his highest ends by making 
himself no longer necessary to his pupil. The im- 
portant thing for the pupil is to be ready to take up 
the freedom that the teacher allows. Only as this 
freedom is accepted can the pupil retain that bitter- 
sweet flavour that Fabre and others value. Just in 
proportion as the teacher ceases to direct must the 
pupil take up the control of his own education. But 
it must never be forgotten that a teacher may have 
ceased to direct, without ceasing to be a very valu- 
[3i] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

able help to the pupil who is conducting his own 
education. 

The difference between school and college may be 
said to lie just in this, that in school the pupil is all 
the time more or less of an educand, whereas at 
college he is entirely his own educator. At school the 
teacher prescribes certain portions to be learnt, and 
in various other ways shows that he takes upon him- 
self the responsibility of the educative process that is 
going on. At the university the professor under- 
takes the responsibility of presenting his matter in 
the way best suited to what he considers to be the 
needs of his students, but to them he leaves the re- 
sponsibility of learning., In the German universities 
the students lay great stress on what is called the 
Lemfreiheit or freedom of learning. They claim to 
be free to learn when and how and where they please. 
They may attend their classes regularly or irregularly 
just as they choose. They can acquire their knowl- 
edge from books or from lectures or from inter- 
course with others, just as they find best for their 
special needs. The university insists upon their 
showing at the end of their course that they have 
acquired the minimum amount of knowledge re- 
quired to obtain a degree, and if the student has used 
his Lemfreiheit unwisely he has to go without his 
degree. Going from school to university under these 
conditions is clearly an equivalent on the intellectual 
side to donning the toga virilis. And just as the 
age at which this toga was assumed differed in indi- 
[32] 



A Guide for All Students 

vidual cases so the stage at which the pupil passes 
from the partly educand partly educator stage into 
the purely educator stage varies in individual cases. 
Many boys have become purely self-educators long 
before their school days are over, while not a few 
do not reach this stage at all, even at the university. 

The very fact that you are reading this book shows 
that you have advanced at least a good way towards 
the stage of being your own educator. If you still 
have teachers to help you, you will do well to make 
of them the best use you can. It is worth while to 
remind you that it is not the business of your teachers 
to save you trouble. In many cases their chief duty 
is to make you take trouble. But they can and 
often do save you from taking useless trouble. You 
may think of doing a thing in a particular way, and 
if left to yourself you would probably succeed in 
attaining your end, and yet that way may be a bad 
one. It is better than none at all, and self-educated 
men sometimes become proud of the very badness 
of their methods. But this surely is unwise. It is 
no loss of dignity and no interference with your 
individuality to be told by a more experienced per- 
son which is the most economical way of doing 
something that you want to do. It is here that the 
wise self-educator shows his wisdom by getting all 
the advice he can before entering upon any bit of 
work. He may or may not accept the advice offered 
— therein lies his freedom — but he will at least enter 
upon his undertaking with the fullest knowledge 
[33] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

available of the various ways in which his end may 
be attained. In the following pages will be found 
many suggestions, the result of long and interesting 
experience of studying and of students. It will be 
for you to give these suggestions your honest atten- 
tion, and to decide which of them you feel called 
upon to adopt. You are no doubt bored at the con- 
tinual repetition, by those whose business it is to 
speak for your good, of the threadbare saying that 
there is no royal road to learning. But there are 
many different kinds of roads, and since you have to 
walk one or other of them it is worth your while to 
make a wise selection at the beginning of your 
journey. 



[34] 



CHAPTER II 



PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 

IT is as essential in study as in warfare to have 
a satisfactory plan of campaign. Irregular 
desultory work never produces the same effect as 
that which is carried on with a definite purpose 
and on clearly thought-out lines. Our plans fall 
naturally into two groups, the one dealing with the 
subjects to be studied, and the other with the distri- 
bution of the time we can devote to each study. At 
school, and even at the university, the general lines 
of our subject-matter are laid down for us from 
above. We are told in broad outlines what to learn, 
though there is certainly a great deal of room left for 
personal organization of the details of this subject- 
matter. With this we shall deal at a later stage. 
Here we are specially interested in the distribution 
of our time. 

We are all familiar with the time-tables that we 

find at school, on which the week's work and the 

work for each day are clearly set out. As pupils in 

a school we must conform to the time-table, so there 

[35] 



Making the Most of 0?ie s Mind 

is no more to be said on that head. But the school 
time is not the only time we give to study. Every 
pupil past the preparatory stage has, and ought to 
have, a certain amount of study to be done in his 
own time and at his own pace. This time must fit 
in, of course, with the requirements of the school. 
That is, if the school makes heavier demands in 
Latin than in Mathematics, then we must give a 
proportionately larger amount of home study to 
Latin. Further, the subjects to be studied each 
evening will be determined by the subjects to be 
taken up in class next day. The result of all this is 
that we must make up a sort of time-table for our 
home study, and it will be found necessary to make 
this time-table fit in with that of the school. But 
the moment you sit down to write out such a table 
you will find a certain difficulty. You will discover 
that the total amount of time needed for preparation 
varies from evening to evening. Some evenings are 
light and others are heavy. You will find that the 
teachers are quite aware of this. But though they 
do all they can to secure a fair degree of uniformity 
in the amount of work demanded each evening, it is 
impossible to arrange matters in the symmetrical way 
they would like. Accordingly, you will see it to be 
necessary to make not the evening but the week the 
unit on which you draw up your time-table. That is, 
you must see to it that if Tuesday evening, for 
example, is a specially heavy one, you do some of 
Tuesday night's work on Monday night. By this 
[36] 



A Guide for All Students 

way of give and take you will find it possible to 
make ends meet in a reasonable way, instead of loaf- 
ing on the easy evenings and overworking on the 
heavy ones. You must be responsible for your 
evening time-table, just as your teachers are respon- 
sible for the school one. It is accordingly rather 
important that you should take account of the nature 
of a time-table, so that you may be able to behave 
intelligently in making and using one. The follow- 
ing points deserve your attention. 

I. In drawing up your time-table you must not be 
too heroic. When you first sit down to consider the 
whole question you will probably feel yourself in a 
glow of noble determination to do the thing very 
thoroughly. It is like making up one's mind to get 
up very early next morning. For the time being 
you are warm and comfortable and full of resolu- 
tion. Nothing seems too drastic. You may as well 
be thorough about it when you are at it. Mr. H. G. 
Wells puts the case very graphically in his Love and 
Mr. Lewisham, where he gives an account of the 
inhuman time-table drawn up by that enthusiastic 
young person. Naturally he could not live up to it, 
and the trouble is that a time-table that falls through 
has its disastrous after effects. In order that you 
may live up to your time-table you must estimate 
very carefully beforehand your capacity for work. 
You must try to gauge this pretty accurately, for 
there is almost as much danger in under-estimating 
as in over-estimating your powers. No doubt it 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

would be easy to make sure of overtaking all you 
laid out for yourself if you deliberately put your 
demands well below your powers. But the result of 
this working below our own natural level is ex- 
tremely bad. It involves no call for strenuous effort. 
Everything goes smoothly and easily. We hardly 
rise above the level of a vegetable. 

We must have ideals, otherwise we shall have no 
incentive to work. When Browning writes : 

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what's a heaven for?" 

he suggests the essential quality of an ideal, which is 
that it can never be fully attained. When we work 
to attain something that we know to be well within 
our reach we are working for an end, not for an 
ideal. This appears a sensible way of working, and 
it cannot be denied that at first sight it seems an 
unsound policy to encourage people to work for an 
ideal, if we start with the assumption that an ideal is 
unattainable. Indeed, it looks as if the beginning of 
this section on time-tables was written just to warn 
you against undertaking something that you could 
not succeed in carrying out. But we must look more 
closely at what underlies this conception of the ideal. 
In your studies you may have come across the 
expression "the mathematical limit." If we take 
lib., |ib., lib., T^lb., uVIb., erlb., iWb., irblb., 
and add them all together we get very nearly a whole 
pound, in fact within a two-hundred-and-fifty-sixth 
part of a pound. This is near enough for all prac- 

[38] 



A Guide for All Students 

tical purposes; but still, if we go on adding always 

another fraction exactly half of the one preceding, 

we get nearer and nearer to a total of exactly one 

pound. One pound is here the mathematical limit 

of the sum of this series. But to reach that limit 

we would need to go for ever adding fractions, 

which enables us to understand the definition of the 

mathematical limit as "that which we can approach 

as nearly as we please, but never actually reach." 

This corresponds to our notion of an ideal. You 

remember that Goldsmith, referring to the horizon, 

has the suggestive lines : 

"That, like the circle bounding earth and skies, 
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies." 

So the ideal allures from far, and when pursued 
proves as unattainable as the horizon. But it does 
not cease to allure. Therein lies its power. Attain- 
ment satisfies us and we cease to strive. The un- 
attained always attracts us : it is a perpetual chal- 
lenge. To be sure, if it could be demonstrated to 
our satisfaction that it was not only unattained but 
unattainable, it might lose its charm. But the ideal 
is not unattainable in that absolute sense. We can 
never reach it, but we can approach it as nearly as 
we please. Thus we are attaining all the time with- 
out ever having attained, and the ideal retains to the 
end its wholesome allurement. 

II. Applying this theory of the ideal to our time- 
table we find that it will be enough to make the 
amount of time to be given to study an end, and not 
[39] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

an ideal. We have to fix a number of hours that we 
know to be within our power, and not start with the 
intention of working the maximum number of hours 
that our organism will stand. But though the num- 
ber of hours should be chosen on the principle of the 
mere end, the kind of work done during these hours 
will give ample opportunity for the operation of the 
ideal. 

In determining the number of hours to be included 
each week in our home time-table, various things 
have to be taken into account. To begin with, the 
number of hours devoted to study at school or college 
will have a determining influence. There is a tradi- 
tional belief that an eight hours' working day is a 
reasonable arrangement. So that if you have five 
hours' work at school there should remain three 
hours to be accounted for at home. But if you have 
a six hours' day at school you will probably find that 
you have still need of three hours at home to keep 
up with your class work, and with a healthy boy or 
girl a nine (or even a ten) hours' day is not danger- 
ous, though it certainly means strenuous work. The 
question of health is of the utmost importance, and 
if your parent or your medical attendant tells you 
that a nine (or ten) hours' day is injurious, then, of 
course, you must accept the decision and make your 
time-table accordingly. The important thing is to 
determine the total amount of time at your disposal 
for home study and make the best use of that. Other 
considerations besides health must be taken into ac- 
[40] 



A Guide for All Students 

count. There are some social duties that demand a 
certain amount of time — particularly in the case of 
girls. But this claim needs to be carefully scruti- 
nized. Some young people are only too ready to 
take a very serious view of their social responsibili- 
ties, just as others are inclined to take an unduly 
pessimistic view of the effect of study on their health. 
Your conscience and your doctor must decide be- 
tween them about the relation between work and 
play, while your parents must help your conscience 
to determine how much time you owe to society. If 
you are entitled to wear the toga virilis and are still 
a student, you will be well advised to keep society 
on pretty short rations in the matter of your time. 

III. With regard to the distribution among the 
various subjects of your whole available time for 
home study, you must rely upon your own experience 
and your own judgment. It is well known that 
certain subjects, for example, Mathematics and 
Latin Prose, are more difficult, and therefore de- 
mand more time than others. Generally speaking, 
therefore, you will give to such subjects a bigger 
share of your time than to others. But here you 
must take account of your own special capacity and 
tastes. It may be that you are specially good at 
mathematics and find constitutional history much 
harder. In that case history should get the prefer- 
ence in the time-table. Further, it sometimes hap- 
pens that though you are not good at a certain sub- 
ject you may have been a longer time at it than have 
[41] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

the others in your class, and thus you may be for a 
term or two in advance of the rest of the class in 
that subject. Clearly you could afford, in such a 
case, to cut down the time you would ordinarily 
give to that subject and devote it to some others in 
which you happen to be weak. 

IV. Having determined the total amount of time 
per week to be given to the various subjects, you 
have next to settle in what order these subjects 
should occur on your time-table, and how they 
should be distributed throughout the week. Here 
there are certain general principles that may give 
you some help. 

(a) The more difficult subjects should always be 
taken when the mind is freshest. This is usually at 
the beginning, or very near the beginning, of a 
period of study. Accordingly, you will be well ad- 
vised to put at those times the subject that you find 
most difficulty in mastering. But this principle 
should be taken in connexion with another. It some- 
times happens that you dislike some subject, though 
you have no great difficulty in dealing with it. 
Speaking generally, we dislike most those subjects 
that are for us the most difficult. But if for any 
reason we find a subject easy enough in a way, but 
unpleasant for us, then we should put that in the 
forefront. So with the end of a study period. That 
is the place for the easiest subjects, but if there is 
some subject that we find hard but still take a positive 
pleasure in, then it may be put at the end, where it 
[42] 



A Guide for All Students 

stands as a sort of inducement to get at it by working 
off the less pleasant matters that precede it. Further 
help in deciding the order in which subjects should 
be studied will be found from a consideration of 
what will be said about fatigue a little later. 

(b) It is found that in most cases the oftener a 
subject is taken in the week the better chance it has 
of getting justice. Thus, if you can afford only two 
and a half hours per week to a given subject, say 
French, this time might be divided into one hour on 
Monday, half an hour on Wednesday, and one hour 
on Friday. Or the time might be divided in the 
simple form of half an hour every day for five days. 
This latter distribution is found to be the more 
profitable. You seem to learn something between 
lessons, even though you may not open your book 
from one lesson to another. On the other hand, some 
subjects require a certain amount of preparation of 
materials for each lesson. Thus if you had two 
hours a week to devote to drawing, it would probably 
be better to have them in two separate hour-periods 
rather than in four half-hour-periods. The time 
spent in putting out and putting away the drawing 
materials would thus be lost only twice a week 
instead of four times. 

(c) While the hardest subjects should generally 
come first and the easiest last, there is room for a 
certain alternation of the easy and the difficult. 
After a very hard subject a very easy one may be 
well used as a sort of rest after the strain. Still we 

[43] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

must keep in view what we have said under (a) on 
this point. But whatever may be done in the way 
of alternating the easy and the difficult, there cer- 
tainly ought to be an alternation according to the 
different kinds of subjects. Thus algebra should be 
followed by something quite different, say French; 
history might be followed by geometry, and geog- 
raphy by composition. It is obvious that this prin- 
ciple of alternation might be quite well combined 
with the alternation of the easy and the difficult, to 
say nothing of the repulsive and the attractive. 

V. One great danger in the use of the time-table 
is rigidity. It is difficult to finish our work in each 
subject at the exact moment when a new subject is 
due. To obviate this difficulty it may be suggested 
that a small period of say fifteen or twenty minutes 
should be set apart at the end of each evening's work 
as a sort of reserve time to finish off any little thing 
we may have been forced to omit in any of the 
ordinary periods. But this plan is dangerous. The 
recognition of a fixed emergency time gives a sort of 
justification for not quite finishing the work at any 
period, and the tendency is to have a bad balance left 
over from every period. It is probably better to 
allow an occasional extension of one subject into the 
period of another. This is very bad, no doubt, but 
the important thing is that it is felt to be bad at the 
time. We cannot avoid feeling conscience-stricken 
when we know that we are favouring one subject at 
the expense of another. All subjects may claim an 
[44] 



A Guide for All Students 

equal right in the reserve period. But the very fact 
that we know we are using Geometry time for French 
work makes us uncomfortable, and therefore drives 
us to avoid such incursions unless under genuine 
stress and strain. You must not allow pedantry to 
stop you to the moment, when a few minutes more 
might produce all the difference between complete 
and incomplete preparation; but if you cultivate a 
tenderness of conscience about overlappings you will 
be able to preserve an adherence to your times that 
is intelligent without being slavish. If your con- 
science is in good working order you may experi- 
ment with a reserve period, with the full resolve to 
use it as seldom as possible as an emergency exten- 
sion for any one subject, and as often as possible as 
a revision period for each subject in turn. If you 
cannot depend on your conscience, avoid having a 
reserve period in your time-table. 

At the present time a great deal of attention is 
given to the question of over-pressure in schools. It 
is probable that with most young people there is 
more danger of under-pressure than over-pressure. 
It is an unwholesome thing to be continually thinking 
about one's health, and it is not desirable to encour- 
age young people to think that their main business 
is to make sure that they do not do too much work. 
All the same, in order that you may have the proper 
information to guide you in managing your work, it 
is worth while telling you some of the facts that have 
[45] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

come out in the many investigations that have re- 
cently been made into the nature of fatigue. Some- 
times we hear of mental fatigue, as if it were 
different from other kinds of fatigue. But it would 
appear that the effects produced by mental work are 
very much the same as those produced by any other 
kind of work. 

To begin with, we are not to regard fatigue as 
something to be avoided. After honest work we 
ought to be fatigued. What we should be afraid of 
and try to avoid is over-fatigue. The difference be- 
tween the two may be said to be that over-fatigue 
demands special means to remove it. If after a piece 
of work you are tired and, as you are apt to say, 
"worn out," you go to bed and have a good sleep 
and waken up refreshed, you have been merely 
normally fatigued. But if when you go to bed you 
are, as we sometimes say, too tired to sleep, or if 
when you do sleep you waken up still tired, and the 
tiredness hangs about you all the next day and 
interferes with your effectiveness in work, then you 
have been over- fatigued. Again a warning is needed. 
You must not be always on the look out for symp- 
toms of tiredness. If they need to be looked for 
they may be safely neglected. On the other hand, 
there are those who find the symptoms all too easily. 
These are they of whom it is contemptuously said, 
"they were born tired." 

What you are mainly concerned with is the effect 
[46] 



A Guide for All Students 

of fatigue upon your work. Now it is worth while 
noting that the moment you start upon a piece of 
work the fatigue effect begins to set in. It is not 
noticeable for quite a long while and does not make 
its influence felt till the work has exhausted a certain 
amount of your energy. But it goes on increasing in 
amount and tends to reduce the effectiveness of your 
efforts. But there are other influences at work at the 
same time. There is first what is called the practice 
effect, which represents the increased skill we acquire 
in doing anything by the very practice we get in 
doing it. Suppose we are working out equations in 
algebra, we acquire by practice greater ease in 
manipulating the material as the lesson goes on ; and 
the same is true of such a different operation as 
memorizing the irregularities of the French verb. 
The other force at work produces what may be called 
the "swing" effect. Apart from the skill we attain 
by practice in a particular operation, we acquire, as 
we go along, a certain swing that carries us on. 
This is what we mean when we say that we have 
warmed up to our work. 

Now the curious thing is that at the beginning of 
a period of study all three forces start work, and all 
three effects go on increasing as the study proceeds. 
But at first the fatigue effect makes little progress, 
while the practice effect and the swing effect progress 
rapidly. By and by, however, the practice and the 
swing effects reach their maximum and cannot be- 
come greater, while the fatigue effect steadily 
[47] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 



increases. At length a time comes when the fatigue 
effect more than counterbalances the other two and 
the effectiveness of study begins to diminish. It 
goes on diminishing till by and by it becomes un- 
profitable to carry on the work. 

The following diagram illustrates what takes place 
in a period of two hours' work. Beginning at A the 

L e 




/"V LENGTH OP TIM£ THE TEST LASTED! IN TMI8 CASE TWO HOURS, Ts>T 

Fatigue Curve. 

Reproduced from Binet and Henri's La Fatigue Intellectuelle, 

by kind permission of Messrs. Schleicher Freres, Paris. 

effectiveness of the work, so far from increasing 
rapidly, begins at first by actually decreasing. This 
results from the distraction that we experience at the 
beginning of a lesson. We are busy fighting against 
all the other interests that claim our attention. But 
when we have settled our account with the matters 
that occupied our minds just before the lesson began, 
and that have made a fight for their place in our 
minds before they finally give way to the matters we 
are studying, there is a rapid increase in the effec- 
[48] 



A Guide for All Students 

tiveness of our work, owing to the growing practice 
and swing effects. This goes on up to C, at which 
point the fatigue effect is able just to counterbalance 
the combined forces of the other two. After that 
there is a steady fall to D. In the ordinary course 
this fall would continue, but when it gets close to the 
end of the study period we are stimulated a little by 
two things. First there is the prospect of a speedy 
release from toil, and this cheers us up. Then there 
is the working of our conscience that tells us that 
our time is now very short, and therefore there is 
the more need for effort. The result is a little spurt 
at the end, which has been compared to what the old 
postilions used to call "the spurt for the avenue," 
meaning the little reserve force that they husbanded 
in their horses during a long journey so that they 
might make a creditable appearance as they drove 
up to the door of the grand house. 

We see, then, from the "curve of fatigue," as the 
diagram is called, that there is always a loss at the 
beginning of a new lesson, because of the distraction 
and because the practice and the swing effects take a 
little time to make themselves felt. In consequence 
you may think that it was bad advice to ask you to 
take five half-hour lessons rather than two lessons of 
an hour each and another of half an hour. But 
there is an interesting fact to be taken into account 
here. The swing effect, it is true, is lost every time 
we give up a lesson and resume it again after an 
interval. But the practice effect is carried over from 
[49] 



Making the Most of One's Mind 

one lesson to another. Experiments have been made 
to determine how long the practice effect lasts, and 
it has been found that the practice effect of a single 
hour's work was preserved and carried over to the 
morrow, and was not entirely lost even after a lapse 
of thirty-eight to forty-seven hours. Since the 
fatigue effect very rapidly disappears, we have thus 
a great advantage, and it is this advantage that 
makes progress possible. Naturally the smaller the 
interval between the lessons the more perfectly is the 
practice effect carried forward. Accordingly it is 
wiser to distribute our time over as many different 
study-periods as can be conveniently arranged, so 
long as they are not too short to secure the full 
benefit of both the swing effect and the practice 
effect. 

The actual length of the study-period to be de- 
voted to each subject will depend upon the nature 
of the subject and the nature and stage of advance- 
ment of the student. In schools we have to arrange 
matters to suit groups, and all we can do is to get 
some sort of average and do the best we can with 
that. With the advanced classes the ordinary 
periods are 40 min., 45 min. and 50 min. With 
younger classes the period is usually much smaller. 
In order to get some sort of general rule that will 
suit all cases it has been suggested that the following 
sliding scale might be adopted with advantage: 

Multiply the number of years in the pupil's age by 
"two, and the result will give you the number of 
[50] 



A Guide for All Students 

minutes that forms the suitable lesson-period for 
that pupil." 

In your own case you will probably find that 
forty minutes forms a very suitable average period 
of study for a subject. A few subjects may be 
satisfied with thirty minutes, and some will demand 
a whole hour. But if you are not trammelled by 
school or college conditions, you may quite wisely 
exercise a fair amount of freedom in your arrange- 
ments. You may, for example, adopt what is called 
the intensive method and concentrate on your sub- 
jects one after the other. Thus mathematics in its 
different branches might monopolize a whole evening 
three times a week for a month, the other subjects 
having to content themselves with short commons till 
their turn came for intensive treatment. Some 
students find this method works extremely well, but 
it should always be used with the safeguard that you 
take a wide sweep in your plan of campaign and 
secure that there is a real periodicity in the intensive 
study. That is, you would take the year as the unit, 
so that each subject would have a chance of getting 
its turn say three or four times a year. If a shorter 
period is taken, you will find yourself inclined to 
stop the system just when a disagreeable subject is 
going to have its innings. Further, this intensive 
plan should be limited to the major subjects. Cer- 
tain of the minor subjects should get uniform 
attention all the way through. 

It seems only natural to expect that the various 

[5i] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

subjects of study should have different fatigue- 
producing effects. Some demand much harder work 
than others. In point of fact, experiments have 
been made, the results of which have led to the 
following classification, in which ioo is accepted as 
the maximum power of producing fatigue: 

Mathematics ioo 

Latin 91 

Greek 90 

Gymnastics 90 

History 85 

Geography §5 

Arithmetic 82 

French 82 

German (the mother tongue) 82 

Nature Study 80 

Drawing yj 

Religion jj 

This table is the outcome of the experiments of a 
German called Wagner, but the results do not quite 
agree with those of another experimenter called 
Kemsies, who puts the subjects in the following 
order, according to their fatigue-producing power : 

1. Gymnastics. 

2. Mathematics. 

3. Foreign Languages. 

4. Religion. 

5. German (mother tongue). 

6. Nature Study and Geography. 

7. History. 

8. Singing and Drawing. 

We need not be surprised that these two tables do 
not agree. There are so many things to be taken 
[52] 



A Guide for All Students 

into account that it is almost impossible to get accu- 
rate results. For one thing, the kind of teacher 
makes all the difference in the world. There are 
easy-going teachers of mathematics who do not take 
much out of their pupils, and there are strict teachers 
of drawing who send their classes away much more 
fatigued than those from the laxer teachers of harder 
subjects. For you the most important source of 
probable error in estimating the fatigue-producing 
power of subjects is the confusion between two quite 
different things. We are very apt to think that we 
are fatigued when we are only bored. Ennui or 
boredom comes upon us when we cannot get up 
sufficient interest in what we are doing. We may be 
quite fresh and ready for any amount of work at 
other things, but not at this particular thing that 
disgusts us. It is in cases like this that a change of 
subject is as good as a rest. If we are really fatigued 
the only remedy is to rest, but if we are merely bored 
we may obtain relief by turning to something else 
for a while and then coming back to the tiresome 
subject. 

You must not, however, too readily resort to this 
change of subject. If you are sure that it is a matter 
of being bored and not of being really fatigued, you 
must be very careful not to yield too easily to the 
desire for change. To give up as soon as you are a 
little bored is contemptible. You must face the un- 
interesting in order to attain to something else that 
is interesting. The encouraging thing is that if we 
[53] 



Making the Most of One's Mind 

do apply ourselves to what has no attraction for us 
we gradually acquire a sort of pleasure in the work. 
If this were not so, it would be necessary to give up 
certain kinds of work altogether, since the mind 
finds it impossible to attend by mere force of will to 
any subject in which no interest whatever can be 
aroused. To the earnest student, however, there are 
no such subjects. There is always a way of connect- 
ing the dry subject, somehow or other, with matter 
that really does interest us. No doubt it would be a 
mistake to confine yourself for long periods to these 
specially uninteresting subjects, and your purpose 
will be served if you give them their fair share of 
attention and do not surrender at the first appearance 
of boredom. 

A somewhat similar problem arises in connexion 
with genuine fatigue. It may be asked : Is it pos- 
sible to do effective work when we are fatigued? 
It appears that it is possible. Suppose that the 
student works on till his usual time for going to bed. 
He is worn out and quite ready to fall asleep. But 
for some reason or other it is imperative that a cer- 
tain piece of work should be done that night. The 
student goes doggedly on, determined to finish his 
work in spite of his weariness. By and by a curious 
thing happens. The drowsiness passes away, the 
mind becomes clear again, and indeed appears to be 
clearer than usual. This renewed vigour is some- 
times called "mental second wind," and investiga- 
tions have been made to find out whether the work 
[54] 



A Guide for All Students 

done under its influence is really good, whether, in 
fact, it stands the test of "next morning." The con- 
clusion reached by those who have looked into the 
matter is that in most cases the work done under 
these unusual conditions is quite good. But the 
report is not so favourable when we come to con- 
sider the effect upon the mind of the student. His 
work may not suffer, but he does. The essay he 
produces may be an excellent essay, but it has cost 
more than usual. This mental second wind is an 
unwholesome thing. It appears that drowsiness and 
the other symptoms of fatigue are nature's warning 
that rest is needed. If the warning is neglected 
nature removes the symptoms and allows the work to 
go on, but at the price that she always demands from 
people who work under pathological conditions. In- 
vestigation seems to show that when we are what we 
usually call fatigued, we are not exhausted. We 
have reserves of energy upon which we can draw. 
This is a beneficent arrangement of nature to meet 
the emergencies of life, and occasions sometimes 
arise on which it is justifiable to call out our reserves 
to meet special needs. But the student must realize 
that it is a dangerous business using emergency 
means in ordinary circumstances. So it is well to 
avoid falling back upon our mental second wind 
unless there is some genuine need for it. 

So far it has been taken for granted that the 
student is connected with some school or college, and 
that accordingly his work as a whole has been 

[55] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

planned out by some one else. But it may quite 
well happen that you who are reading this are what 
is called a private student. You may be conducting 
your studies entirely on your own responsibility, 
and therefore in need of some little guidance on the 
planning out of your work as a whole. Now in 
approaching a new subject there are two main ways 
of arranging your work. One may be called the 
Method of Complete Detail, the other the Rapid 
Impression Method. The first proceeds on the good 
old-fashioned way of dealing in full detail with 
everything as it comes, and mastering each part of 
the subject in its due order and in all its parts. In 
the second the student takes a scamper over the 
whole ground as rapidly as possible, in order to get a 
general idea of what it is all about, and then by and 
by goes over the same ground in greater and greater 
detail. Each method has its advantages and its 
dangers. The Method of Complete Detail commends 
itself to those who are greatly attracted by the ordi- 
nary ideal of thoroughness. It seems the natural 
thing to begin at the beginning and go right on. But 
it is not always a very intelligent way of approach- 
ing a subject. The student sometimes is put into 
such a position that he cannot see the wood for the 
tree.s. His attention is so much occupied with details 
that he is unable to form any general idea of what it 
is all about. It is sometimes months after he has 
begun a study that a glimmering of what it all means 
dawns upon him. On the other hand, the Rapid 
[56] 



A Guide for All Students 

Impression Method is very attractive to the quick- 
witted, keen, easily interested student, who gallops 
with great joy through the whole subject, gathering 
interest as he goes. When it is necessary, however, 
to begin to go over the matter again in greater detail 
this type of student is apt to flag. 

You will see that in a general way the detailed 
method attracts those of hard wits, while the quick- 
witted probably prefer the Rapid Impression Method. 
You must accordingly consider to which of the two 
classes you belong and face the problem with a 
knowledge of your bias. You will doubtless have 
no difficulty in making up your mind which way 
your ' inclinations turn ; but you must decide for 
yourself which of the two methods is most likely to 
be advantageous to you, being the person you are and 
in the circumstances in which you find yourself. 
You will almost certainly feel that there is a rather 
close balancing of advantages and disadvantages 
between the two methods, and you will be inclined 
to make some sort of compromise method of your 
own so as to combine the advantages of both ; and in 
this you will be wise. For what such a compromise 
means is that you have made a special application of 
certain general principles in such a way as to meet 
circumstances as they exist here and now. 

To begin with, if this is the first occasion on which 

you seek to make an application of your knowledge 

of how you stand in relation to the two kinds of wit, 

you will probably find that you are not quite sure 

[57] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

whether your wit is hard or quick. In some subjects 
you seem to belong to the quick wits and in others to 
the hard. You will be wise then, in taking the nature 
of the subject into account in classifying your 
powers, and you cannot go far wrong in making 
your compromise between the two methods depend 
upon the nature of your own temperament. If you 
feel yourself to be too quick-witted, too motor, too 
ready to jump to conclusions, too easily bored with 
detail, you will be well advised to give your studies a 
bias towards the Complete Detail Method. If, on 
the other hand, you were inclined at school to depend 
entirely on the directions of your teachers, to take 
each day's work for granted, to regard everything, 
in fact, as "all in the day's work," then a bias towards 
the other method will be to your advantage. The 
ordinary workaday student, the person who takes no 
responsibility for the results of his work, the sort of 
student, in short, who is not in the least likely to read 
a book like the present, is the person who stands 
most in need of the Rapid Impression Method. But 
after all, were it not for the danger of appearing to 
under-estimate the value of thoroughness, it would 
be safe to ask all students to give their work a bias 
towards Rapid Impressionism. The really earnest 
student may be trusted not to misunderstand or mis- 
use the more attractive method, but he must be 
warned to lose no opportunity of stiffening his will- 
power by applying himself to the less attractive 
details. 

[58] 



CHAPTER III 



MANIPULATION OF THE MEMORY 

NO apology is necessary for giving to memory 
a chapter all to itself. It is recognized as 
one of the fundamental qualities of human nature 
and the basis of our self-identity. Without memory 
our individual existence would lose all meaning. We 
know that we are the same persons that we were 
last year, because we remember the experience we 
then had. Memory bridges over the gulf of time 
and convinces us of the continuity of our own 
personality. 

But while this is true for people in general, for 
the student the memory has a rather special signifi- 
cance. It has to do with the retention of knowledge, 
which is the student's special business. We can all 
acquire, at any given time, a mastery over certain 
facts, but if we are unable to retain that mastery our 
labour in acquiring it is wasted. Students are only 
too willing to admit the weakness of their memory 
and to lay to that score a_great many of their failures. 
Now it has to be admitted that much depends upon 
[59] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

the quality of the memory with which each student 
starts. A memory that retains well and reproduces 
easily is certainly a great advantage to a student. It 
is idle to say that "mere memory" is in itself some- 
thing rather contemptible. There is a popular im- 
pression that intellect and memory do not, as a rule, 
go together, that the man who has really good brain 
power is usually indifferently gifted in the matter 
of mere memory. But experience does not bear this 
out. There are people, to be sure, who have great 
power of memory and little power of thinking. 
These, by depending entirely upon their memory, 
sometimes bring the memory into disrepute. But, 
on the other hand, people of great intellectual power 
who have also excellent memories are those who rise 
to the highest levels. Both qualities are needed to 
make a really efficient student. It is sometimes said 
that a man may have too good a memory. When 
he wishes to recall something that he wants, his 
memory shoots out before him all manner of things 
that he does not want along with the one thing that 
he does want, so that he is confused with the richness 
of the store. But this does not imply that the man's 
memory is too good, but only that it is not properly 
managed. The natural quality of the memory is 
one thing, the management of the memory is another. 
Of the two, the management is in the hands of 
the student. The natural quality he must take as 
something given, something that cannot be changed. 
You are probably surprised to hear this, as you have 
[60] 



A Guide for All Students 

no doubt heard and read a great deal about the 
improvement of the memory. Psychologists are not 
yet quite agreed about the matter, but you will find 
that the balance of opinion is entirely against the 
possibility of improving the original, or what may 
be called the "brute," memory. We are born into 
the world with a memory of a certain degree of 
retentiveness and power of recall. And with that 
memory we must go through the world, making the 
best use of it that we can. We may use it wisely or 
foolishly — and for this we are responsible — but we 
have only that one memory to use, we cannot im- 
prove its intrinsic quality. It is true that we can do 
something even on the physical side to keep the 
memory at its best. Wholesome living has a great 
deal to do with the working of the memory. Over- 
work, overfeeding, overdrinking, indulgence of 
every kind, all have a marked effect on the brute 
memory. Even young people notice how badly the 
memory works when they are fatigued, and experi- 
ence proves that certain diseases resulting from ex- 
cess show their beginnings by a gradual weakening 
of the brute memory. The one way that you can 
get at this brute memory so as to keep it at its best 
is by sensible and cleanly living. 

But though we cannot improve the brute memory, 
we may greatly increase its effectiveness by manipu- 
lating it properly. To do this it is necessary to 
examine what sort of memory we have got, and to 
discover how we may best use it. In order that we 
[61] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

may remember something, we must impress it upon 
our minds with a certain degree of force. Some 
minds require a good deal of force, others require 
very little. The less initial force required the better 
the memory is said to be. Suppose you and a friend 
test yourselves by trying how often each of you 
must read over a little poem before you are able to 
reproduce it perfectly by memory. It may be that 
by reading it over say four times you have mastered 
it, while your friend has to read it over twelve times 
before he succeeds. In that case your memories 
stand to one another in the ratio of "four to twelve: 
this means that your friend requires three times as 
much initial force as you do in order to master the 
poem. Your memory, in fact, may be said to be 
three times as good as his. If you like to put it in 
that way, his index of memory is one while your 
index is three. Teachers are now beginning to look 
into this matter, and in the future they will probably 
all arrange for giving an index for every pupil in a 
class. The boy with the poorest memory will have 
the index one, the boy with the best memory the 
index ten, and all the rest will be arranged some- 
where between, so that every pupil in the class will 
know "his actual rank with regard to memory — or 
at anyrate the teacher will, for he may not consider 
it wise to share his knowledge with the pupils, 
especially at early stages. In the higher classes, no 
doubt, it is well that the pupils should know their 
own indexes. 

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A Guide for All Stude?iis 

But your investigation of your own memory is 
not yet complete. You must not forget that though 
it has cost your friend three times as much effort 
as you, the result in his case is the same as in yours. 
You have both mastered the poem. You have both 
the same possession, though you have bought it at 
different rates. To this extent you have a distinct 
advantage as a student over your friend. But there 
is another test to be made. Next morning, let both 
of you try to repeat the poem and note how many 
mistakes each of you makes. Do the same thing 
three days later, then a week later, then a month 
later, then three months later. It may come out that 
though you learnt the poem three times more easily 
than your friend, he may remember it accurately 
twice as long. You will, of course, see that we can- 
not have very exact results in a case like this. When 
we say that you forget twice as much as your friend 
we must be understood to speak in a rather general 
way. What we are doing is to establish a rough and 
ready index of forgetfulness or obliviscence. In 
this case your index of obliviscence would be two 
to your friend's one. So that in estimating the 
index of really efficient memory you would not rank 
very much above your friend, for your greater ease 
of learning would be balanced by his power of re- 
taining longer an accurate knowledge of what he 
had learned. All these things will be kept in view 
by the teacher in the future when he is estimating 
the powers of his pupils, and he may either have 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

two indexes for each pupil, an index of quickness 
of learning and an index of obliviscence, or he may 
amalgamate the two and find a composite index of 
memory "efficiency." 

But suppose now that you surpass your friend in 
both ease of acquiring and power of retaining accu- 
rately, you have that permanent advantage over him 
as a student. Suppose, further, that you and he do 
exactly the same kind of work and put out exactly 
the same amount of energy in the same way for ten 
years, then at the end of that period you will almost 
certainly stand in the same relative position to one 
another, so far as the natural power of memory is 
concerned. You will still retain your initial advan- 
tage: your index of memory will remain the same 
in relation to his. No doubt you will have acquired 
more knowledge than he during the ten years, but 
that is beside the present point. 

If, however, during these ten years you rely upon 
your superior natural gifts, while your friend, realiz- 
ing his disadvantage, puts extra energy into his 
work and uses his poorer memory energetically and 
skilfully, and seeks out the best ways of manipulating 
it, the result at the end of the ten years may well be 
that he can use his memory so as to produce results 
as easily and as quickly as you. But this does not 
mean that his brute memory has been improved, but 
only that he has learnt to use it in a more skilful way, 
and in particular to apply it more effectively in con- 
nexion with certain definite kinds of facts. 
[64] 



A Guide for All Students 

This last point is of special importance, for ex- 
perience shows that improvement in the memory 
is always improvement in a certain direction, that 
is, in connexion with a particular kind of matter. 
Indeed, it is sometimes said that we have all excel- 
lent memories for something or other. School- 
masters are well aware that the boy who cannot 
anchor the battle of Marathon to any fixed date, 
has no difficulty in reeling off an interminable list 
of "football fixtures" for the coming season. The 
girl who can never be sure whether Bombay is on 
the east or on the west coast of India, will remember 
in the minutest detail the position of a ribbon on a 
hat that she saw weeks ago in a shop window. This 
does not mean that we have different kinds of mem- 
ories — a football memory and a history memory, 
a millinery memory and a geography memory — but 
merely that we remember different kinds of things 
with different degrees of ease and accuracy. The 
natural interest of a boy in football is replaced in 
the future by the acquired interest in the affairs of 
his business or his profession. He can, in adult life, 
remember business matters even though his memory 
for other things is very bad. Sometimes, indeed, he 
can remember business things only in connexion 
with business. A psychologist gives a case, for 
example, in which a ticket-clerk could remember all 
about fares and distances and connexions while he 
was in his little office, but the moment he left it he 
could give no reliable information even about his 
[65] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

own line. Memory improvement nearly always 
means improvement in dealing with a particular class 
of facts. 

The minimum initial force necessary to impress 
something on the mind so as to secure its retention 
may be applied all at one time, or it may be applied 
at different times by instalments. Suppose we had 
a standard unit of force, say one second of the most 
intense attention of which we are capable, and that 
ten of these units were necessary to commit a par- 
ticular fact to memory. Then we might either give 
the ten seconds consecutively, or in separate instal- 
ments. Thus we might give ten separate seconds 
with an interval between each, or five periods of two 
seconds with an interval between each period. The 
intervals may be long or short, so that quite a number 
of considerations claim attention. The important 
question is, which is the better way of learning, the 
condensed application or the instalment system? 
Often we have no choice. Certain matters must be 
committed to the memory at once, or our chance is 
for ever gone. But, on the other hand, there are 
occasions when we do have the choice between the 
two methods, and our general principle should be 
that in cases of small portions of subject-matter the 
condensed form is the better, whereas when we have 
to face a longish bit of work the instalment system 
is more profitable. What we considered already in 
connexion with the distribution of your time among 
your various subjects applies here. You have all 
[66] 



A Guide for All Students 

the advantage of unconscious cerebration between 
the different instalments. It is true that we have 
here certain considerations that do not apply to the 
same degree in the process of learning as opposed to 
remembering. We have to realize that the rate at 
which we forget has to be taken into account. If we 
have a high "index of obliviscence" then it may be 
less advisable for us to adopt the instalment system. 
We may lose so much between the instalments as to 
cause an unprofitable amount of relearning. If your 
obliviscence index is small, you are safe to adopt the 
instalment system. If it is large, you have to choose 
between avoiding the instalment system altogether, 
and adopting it with the modification that there must 
be the smallest practicable interval between each 
instalment. The latter alternative must be adopted 
in all cases where, from the nature of the case, the 
concentrated method cannot be applied. Such cases 
are continually occurring, since many things have to 
be committed to memory that are so complicated that 
they cannot be all mastered at one sitting. 

The use of the phrase "committing to memory" 
is apt to be confusing, as it has at least the suggestion 
of that kind of memory work known as learning by 
rote. This means getting into the memory a form 
of words without paying any attention to the mean- 
ing. Sometimes a distinction is drawn between 
learning by heart and learning by rote. As a rule 
the terms are used interchangeably, but, if they must 
be distinguished, learning by heart may be said to 
[67] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

be learning a subject in such a way that it becomes 
a part of our very self. We deal with the matter so 
thoroughly that we actually assimilate it. Rote- 
learning, on the other hand, may be limited to the 
mere parrot-like repetition of a form of words, so 
as to commit them to the brute memory without any 
thought of their meaning. For example, in learning 
the multiplication table, a child may sing the tables 
up and down so as to be able to repeat them either 
upwards or downwards, and yet be unable to use 
the tables unless by repeating each table till the ap- 
propriate number is reached. This would be learn- 
ing by rote. On the other hand, the pupil may be so 
practised by the teacher in giving at once various 
products, such as four times eight, nine times seven, 
eleven times twelve, that he is able at a moment's 
notice to give any product in the table. In this case 
he may be said to know the table by heart. If there 
be any distinction, the advantage in such matters 
clearly lies with learning by heart. But it is usual 
to use the terms interchangeably. 

In former times so much was done in schools by 
means of mere rote work that it is not wonderful 
that there is at present a great feeling against it. 
One of the earliest protests is to be found in Mon- 
taigne, who tells us that "To know by heart is not 
to know." As you will see, this statement is am- 
biguous. The two possible meanings are: (a) The 
fact that you know a thing by heart does not neces- 
sarily imply that you really know it. (b) The very 
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A Guide for All Students 

fact that you know a thing by heart shows that you 
do not know it. The first meaning is certainly the 
only justifiable one. It is nonsense to maintain be- 
cause we know, say, a poem by heart that therefore 
we do not understand it. In fact, there is a definite 
place for learning by heart. A person who learns 
by heart a proposition in geometry is not only wast- 
ing his time but is injuring his chances of doing 
genuine thinking. The pupil's own form of stating 
the proposition is preferable to that of anyone else, 
since it secures the activity of the pupil's mind. But 
in the case of anything in which the form is of the 
very essence of the business in hand, then learning 
by rote is both justifiable and desirable. A great 
part of the charm of a poem is the beauty of the 
actual expression. There is nothing more irritating 
than to hear some one praising a poem and giving 
scrappy, inaccurate renderings of a beautiful passage, 
interspersed with crude prose paraphrases to fill up 
what the speaker cannot remember in the poet's 
words. A poem should be either quoted verbatim 
or merely described. Even "rules" are sometimes 
worthy to be learnt by heart. But here we must be 
very careful. It is always wrong to begin by learn- 
ing a rule and then go about applying it. But in the 
course of your studies you will be set frequently by 
your teacher to work out certain problems, and as 
you work them you will gradually see the under- 
lying principle on which you proceed. By and by 
your teacher will invite you to set out the principle. 
[69] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

This is really an invitation for you to formulate a 
rule. Your formulation may be excellent, but 
frequently it will be found to be faulty, and the 
teacher will present you with a carefully thought-out 
and precisely expressed rule. This it is often desir- 
able to memorize, since it expresses in the clearest 
and most exact way a truth that you have thoroughly 
grasped. It is profitable, then, to memorize rules 
for which you have honestly worked. 

Since there are occasions on which it is desirable 
to learn things by heart, it is worth while consider- 
ing the best way of setting about the business. To 
begin with, we must give up the notion that we are 
to work in the unintelligent way that the definition 
of rotework implies. So far from it being desirable 
that we should not think of the subject-matter, we 
ought to keep prominently before us the meaning of 
what we are learning. If we are dealing with a 
mere rule, or a mere bit of grammatical accidence, 
there is no difficulty. It is only a matter of concen- 
tration of attention. But when we approach a work 
of greater length a very definite problem arises, the 
problem of the unit of memorizing. In learning a 
poem, for example, of the length of Milton's 
U Allegro or Gray's Elegy, almost no one could 
master it at a sitting. The work has accordingly to 
be divided up into sections, and the problem arises 
of the principle on which the division should be 
made. The length of each section can be determined 
only in view of the time at your disposal on each 
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A Guide for All Students 

occasion and on your own index of memory. But 
the division should certainly be made according to 
the nature of the subject-matter, and not merely by 
the number of lines. In other words, certain por- 
tions of a poem are more easily memorized than 
others, and it is therefore unwise to divide a poem up 
merely into passages of a certain number of lines 
each. We learn by following the thread of the 
poet's thought rather than by following the mechan- 
ical division of lines and stanzas. 

Having selected a unit, say six stanzas, for a par- 
ticular period, the next principle to be observed is 
that the unit should be learnt as a whole. This 
seems a very remarkable bit of advice. For we 
are so accustomed to learn a poem stanza by stanza 
that there seems something altogether wrong in 
attempting to learn six stanzas at once. Yet actual 
experience shows that it is more profitable to read 
over the whole six stanzas consecutively and then 
re-read them over and over again as a whole. It 
appears that the gain comes in from the carrying 
over of the stream of intelligence from one stanza 
to the next. When we learn by separate stanzas, 
each is inclined to stand out as a unit by itself, and 
there is a difficulty at the end of each in getting 
switched on to the proper one to follow. The advan- 
tage in time-saving of this block-system of learning 
by heart arises from the fact that it makes the 
subject-matter of first importance in the learning. 
The words take their proper place as the expression 
[71] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

of consecutive thought. This makes it specially 
important that we should understand perfectly the 
meaning of what we set about committing to 
memory. Any mistake that we commit to memory 
involves a great amount of wasted time before it 
can be re-learnt correctly. 

Do your memorizing as quickly and intensely as 
possible. Divide up your time available for this 
purpose into sections of severe concentration, 
separated by short pauses, during which you allow 
the mind to lie fallow. After committing some- 
thing to memory try, if possible, not to begin at 
once on a new piece of work. It is profitable to 
allow the matter a little time to sink in. 

You will, of course, distinguish between the kind 
of memory we are here dealing with, verbal memory, 
and the other kind that, you remember, we named 
rational memory. In the first kind we retain and 
recall the very words used in certain connexions. 
This may be done with or without understanding 
their meaning, though we have seen that such an 
understanding is an advantage. In the case of the 
rational memory we recall facts in their true rela- 
tions to one another, though we may be unable to 
express them exactly as we may have heard them 
expressed. This is the kind of memory that enables 
one to give "the substance of" a passage that one 
has read. Of the two, the rational memory is the 
more important, but each has its place. A person 
may be very weak in verbal memory and quite strong 
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A Guide for All Students 

in rational memory. The two powers have no fixed 
ratio to one another. It used to be thought that by- 
cultivating the verbal memory the rational memory 
could be strengthened. It was a very common belief, 
for example, that by learning poetry by heart, the 
memory in general could be improved. This view 
is now abandoned, and it is recognized that memory- 
training must consist in training the memory in the 
particular way in which improvement is desired. 
Practice in learning by rote only increases our skill 
in rote-learning. 

When we say that the brute memory cannot be 
improved, we have seen that we seem to go against 
the experience of people in general, for we are all 
familiar with certain systems of memory-training 
that profess to increase the natural capacity of 
remembering. But all these systems depend for 
their success on a skilful manipulation of the natural 
memory the pupil brings to the system-maker. They 
all start by causing the pupil to acquire in the 
ordinary way, that is by application and repetition, 
some definite basework, and then arrange in some 
definite relation to this basework all matters to be 
remembered. Many of them are very ingenious, 
but they all demand a certain amount of initial effort, 
and a further effort in applying the ingeniously 
systematized rules. They all depend on getting the 
pupil to apply the ordinary modes of remembering, 
though these are aided by the scheme of the system- 
atizes One of the oldest schemes, for example, is 
L73l 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

to make the pupil imagine he has a house of a 
certain number of rooms, each room being set apart 
for one special set of facts — one room for agri- 
culture, another for war, another for law, another 
for literature, and so on. Each fact the pupil wishes 
to retain is taken by him in imagination to the 
proper room and there deposited in 'a suitable place 
in relation to the other facts already placed there. 
This continual wandering about the imaginary house 
familiarizes the pupil with the contents of each room, 
and thus by repetition and revision enables him to 
master the essential details. The system-makers 
claim to establish a memoria technica, an artificial 
memory. But we can no more have an artificial 
memory than we can have an artificial soul. 

What gives success to the memory-improvers is 
the fact that they do insist upon their pupils concen- 
trating upon certain points. The mere fact that the 
pupil must repeatedly go over the facts to be retained 
ensures that he shall make that expenditure of energy 
upon each that is essential to its complete retention. 
Further, people who go to trainers of the memory 
want to learn: in almost every case they want to 
learn some particular kind of fact, and all the exer- 
cises they get naturally are made to bear upon facts 
of this class. Accordingly progress is made. You 
may rest assured that there is no memory improver 
like the honest and earnest concentration of attention 
on the facts that you wish to master. 

Yet an intelligible arrangement of facts does help 
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A Guide for All Students 

greatly, and what the best of the memory systems 
do is to enable the pupil to organize the facts that he 
wishes to retain. The hardest facts to hold are 
isolated facts. The ideas in the mind have been 
compared to "living creatures having hands and 
feet." These living creatures have a tendency to 
form friendships among themselves and to do the 
best they can for one another. One of their main 
acts of friendship is to help their friends into the 
consciousness where they themselves belong and to 
do their best to prevent them from being thrust out 
of it. Accordingly the greater the number of 
friends a new idea can form among the old ideas, 
the better its chance of retaining its place in the 
mind, or of being easily brought back to it. The 
moment we can fit a new fact into a group of old 
facts, we have given it a chance of retaining its 
place in our mind. 

Certain more or less artificial ways of grouping 
new facts with old are recognized and known by 
the name of Mnemonics. Among the tricks of this 
kind are the well-known rhyming Geographies and 
Histories that have had their day and have gone to 
the place prepared for them. It is among the best 
of these, Dr. Mackay's Rhyming Geography, that 
we find the following : — 

"The states of Northern Germany 
Are twenty-two in number, 
The names of which I need not give 
The mem'ry to encumber." 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

Even worse is another stanza from the same book: 

"The southern half's a triangle 

Of greater elevation, 
With several lofty peaks that reach 
The line of congelation." 

What is wrong with these is the intolerable amount 
of scaffolding to the very small amount of structure. 
Further, any pupil who knows about "the line of 
congelation" does not need the help of a stanza to 
remember that the Deccan is triangular and has 
snowy mountains. The help given by such verses 
is illegitimate, since it tends to throw us back upon 
mere rote-learning. We depend on words, not upon 
thoughts. It is true that there are certain facts in 
our studies that cannot be fully explained at the 
stage at which the pupil stands, and yet must be 
remembered. Of this kind are the verbs that govern 
the dative in Latin; and many of us, in our pre- 
paratory-school days, have been grateful to the 
author of certain flagrant rhymelets. 

"A dative put, remember pray, 
After envy, spare, obey, 
Heal, favour, hurt, resist, to these 
Add, order, succour and displease. . . . !" 

And so on. Some objection might be raised to 
this mnemonic since certain fairly intelligible reasons 
can be assigned why these verbs should govern the 
dative and not the accusative. But there is another 
mnemonic of the same kind that seems to meet all 
the requirements. It is that which keeps in the 
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A Guide for All Students 

memory the Latin prepositions that govern the 
ablative. It runs: 

"A, ab, abs, absque, de, 
E, ex, coram, cum, pro, prae, 
palam, sine, terms." 

Here there is no scaffolding at all. The mnemonic 
fries in its own juice as it were. It has the attrac- 
tion of both rhyme and rhythm. Further, it deals 
with just those matters that cannot be treated in a 
rational way. There is no doubt some reason why 
these prepositions should govern the ablative and 
others should not, but it is not a reason that is 
open to the pupils at the stage at which a mnemonic 
is valuable. The same argument might be applied 
to the mnemonic for keeping in their proper places 
those troublesome nones in the Roman calendar. 
The following couplet is supposed to remove the 
difficulty : 

"In March, July, October, May, 
The nones fell on the seventh day." 

But when all is said, we are not secure. May is 
the only month about which we can be quite certain. 
The rhyme fixes it. But the other months in the 
first line might easily escape us, and in our effort 
to make the lines run we might quite well substitute 
other months. Thus the couplet might readily go: 

"In April, June, November, May, 
The nones fell on the fifteenth day." 

The matter of rhythm is too often neglected in 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

the process of memorizing. If it is necessary to 
keep in mind a group of words that are related to 
each other, it is advisable to arrange them in such a 
way that they shall run smoothly into each other. 
The following illustration serves at once as a warn- 
ing and as a model. It was part of the work of 
school pupils to "get up" all the important towns in 
each of the counties in the British Islands. This 
should have been done, of course, by making the 
pupils look out the towns on their maps and make a 
mental picture of their place in each county and 
their positions relative to each other. But teachers 
often adopted the plan of making their pupils merely 
memorize a list of towns for each county. Thus 
the four important towns of Argyleshire were learnt 
by rote as Inverary, Dunoon, Oban, Campbeltown. 
So far we have had only the warning. For in the 
first place, the list should not have been committed 
to memory in this way at all, and in the second, if 
it had to be committed, it should have been so 
arranged as to help the mind in retaining it. Note 
how much more easily it runs as Inverary, Oban, 
Campbeltown, Dunoon. If you repeat it over two or 
three times you find a difficulty in stopping. At 
least, that was what happened to the children who 
had the words placed in this order. If you have to 
get up the members of a particular ministry, or a 
list of minerals, that have no special order of relative 
importance, it is wise to arrange them so that they 
make a pleasing combination of sound. 

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A Guide for All Students 

We all do this sort of thing in our efforts to 
master more or less disconnected details. Even the 
method of using the initial letters of words that 
have to be grouped together is quite permissible. 
The student is assumed to have a competent knowl- 
edge of the important parts of the subject and to 
require help only in keeping the proper elements 
together, and in recalling them in their proper place. 
No student of English History has any difficulty in 
stating who the members of the famous Cabal were. 
He reads them off by their initials, Clifford, Arling- 
ton, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale. I quote 
this example because it is interesting and respectable. 
You will be well advised to avoid all such childish 
phrases as those used to keep in their order the 
battles of the Wars of the Roses. An occasional 
manipulation of the initials of things we want to 
group is quite permissible, but any elaboration of 
the plan is a waste of time, with the added danger 
of emphasizing unimportant elements and relations. 

There is one particular problem for the memory 
that gives rise to a great deal of difficulty. This 
is the fixing of the alternative. It is quite common 
for the student to remember that a fact is true in 
one of two forms, but not to be sure which is which. 
The point is illustrated in the venerable story of 
the drill sergeant who asked the recruit his height, 
and was told that it was "either ten foot five or 
five foot ten." In a case of this kind there is a 
standard ready at hand to determine which alterna- 
[79] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

tive should have the preference. But it is not usually 
so, and the student is often tormented with doubts, 
and has sometimes to fall back upon mere guess- 
work, to throw up the penny and let fate decide. 
Most of us try individual little tricks to keep us 
right when we see the chance of our being put in a 
dilemma by a future demand for a decision. Here 
are some examples. 

In French there are two verbs that have an awk- 
ward trick of getting into each other's way. Pecher 
means to fish, and pecher means to sin. The student 
has no difficulty in remembering that the one has 
an acute accent and the other a circumflex, but the 
trouble is to remember which gets which. An in- 
genious teacher got his pupils out of this hesitation 
by saying that a sinner usually thinks he is a rather 
'cute person. Sinners aren't really acute, the teacher 
explained in the interests of morality, but they think 
they are, so "you will always remember that sinning 
gets the acute accent." To make matters doubly 
sure, this teacher pointed out that the circumflex 
accent was not very like a fish-hook, but it was at 
anyrate more like a fish-hook than was the acute 
accent. With these two lines of guidance this 
teacher's pupils never after had any trouble with 
these verbs. 

It is not difficult to make pupils understand that 

in the northern hemisphere whirlwinds rotate from 

east to west, or, as it is commonly expressed, "in 

the opposite direction to the hands of a watch," and 

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A Guide for All Students 

that whirlwinds in the southern hemisphere move in 
the direction west to east, or in the same direction 
as the hands of a watch. It is found that pupils 
readily remember the distinction, but they are never 
sure on which side of the equator the two kinds of 
movements are to be placed. Here again the in- 
genious person comes along and explains that if we 
take the ordinary movement of the hands of the 
watch to be the standard, we have only to ask our- 
selves about the whirlwind whether it follows the 
direction of the hands of a watch and remember the 
following answer : North, no : south, so. This, again, 
worked very well for examination purposes, but the 
question rises whether such tricks are justifiable in 
our studies. The answer is best given by consider- 
ing the state of knowledge of the person who uses 
the mnemonic. If this knowledge is sufficient to 
supply a rational explanation, then we should never 
fall back upon a mere trick to fix the alternative. 
The practical rule that should guide us in the use of 
Mnemonics is : Make the mnemonic as real as pos- 
sible, i. e., let the scaffolding be as closely related to 
the fact to be remembered and as true to reality in 
itself as is possible. Another way of expressing the 
same thing is : Never depend on a mnemonic when 
you can reason out the facts from data supplied. 

For example, time in New York is different from 
time in London, and many people can never remem- 
ber whether the American clocks are fast or slow 
compared with the English. An English mnemonic 
[81] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

might be that however smart the Americans think 
themselves, the English are always several hours 
ahead of them. The Americans might retaliate with 
the mnemonic that since England is an old and 
effete country, it is natural that it should be evening 
in England while it is still noon in America: young 
nation young time, old nation old time. But this 
is a case in which no mnemonic is required. Every- 
body knows that the sun moves from east to west. 
When it is overhead at London, London has midday, 
while America must wait till the sun reaches her 
before it can be midday there. An English watch 
must therefore be "fast" when compared with an 
American watch. 

Among the most effective ways of fixing the 
alternative is the force of contrast. In the scale of 
colours the wave-lengths increase towards the red 
end of the spectrum and diminish towards the violet. 
There are reasons for this, which the man of science 
can give, no doubt, but for the student at an examina- 
tion in elementary physics it is comforting to remem- 
ber that red is the smallest name for a colour and 
yet has the biggest wave-length. Violet has a big 
name and yet has to be content with the smallest 
wave-length. This mnemonic is typical of the sort 
of thing that is most useful to you in your ordinary 
work. It is simple, natural, free from scaffolding 
and all manner of fuss ; and these are just the quali- 
ties you should insist upon having in the mnemonics 
you use. 

[82] 



CHAPTER IV 



NATURE OF STUDY AND THINKING 

WHEN we study we apply our minds to what 
is going on around us, in order that we may 
learn how to behave ourselves intelligently in rela- 
tion .to those surroundings. We are not to suppose 
that study is confined to books. It is true that most 
people associate the notion of study with schools and 
colleges, or at the very least with books. But in the 
broad sense study consists in deliberately acquiring 
such familiarity with our surroundings as shall en- 
able us to make ourselves thoroughly at home in 
them. To be sure, conning the multiplication table 
and learning to read seem remote from the needs of 
the very complicated adult life that lies before the 
pupil, but the accomplishments of the schoolroom 
have all a very definite relation to the pupil's present 
and future surroundings. Study has for its aim 
the mastery of the conditions under which we have 
to live. The student may be misdirected in his 
study, but the mastery of his surroundings is always 

[83] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

his ultimate aim. Indeed, education has been de- 
fined as the process by which the educand absorbs 
and is absorbed by his environment. As we learn 
we may be said to take possession of the outer world 
and make it a part of our mental life, while at the 
same time the outer world is taking possession of 
us and making us conform to all its conditions ; the 
result being that we gradually find ourselves more 
and more at home in our surroundings. 

Froebel, in speaking of education, tells us that the 
pupil's activity works in two ways. At one time it is 
busy taking in material from the outer world : this 
he calls making the outer inner. At another time 
it is occupied in impressing its own influence upon 
things without : this he calls making the inner outer. 
In the first case the outer world is supplying material 
for the mind to work upon ; in the second the mind, 
by its reaction on this material, is, at least to some 
extent, modifying the outer world. Sometimes the 
first process is called impression and the second 
expression. To the process of learning, both are 
necessary. 

Herbert Spencer expresses the same truth some- 
what differently when he says that "knowledge is 
turned into faculty as soon as it is taken in, and 
forthwith aids in the general function of thinking 
. . . does not lie merely written on the pages of an 
internal library, as when rote-learnt." In plain 
English, Spencer regards it as possible to turn fact 
into faculty. At first sight this seems a hard saying. 
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A Guide for All Students 

How can an external fact, say the law of gravitation, 
become a part of the faculty of a human being? 
But when you come to think of it, you will realize 
that you are a different sort of person from what you 
would be did you not know the law of gravitation.. 
Everybody knows the effects of the law of gravita- 
tion, whether they know the law itself or not. The 
most illiterate man would be a different sort of 
person if he did not know that when the support of 
his hand is removed from the jug he is carrying, it 
will fall to the ground. And in the same way you 
would be a slightly different person from what you 
are if you did not know that gravitation exercises 
its power "inversely as the squares of the distance." 
If, as a matter of fact, you do not at this moment 
happen to know the exact law of gravitation, then 
you will become a slightly different person when 
you do know it. 

When you look into the matter, you will readily 
see that knowledge is sometimes treated as passive 
and sometimes as active; or, if you prefer it, knowl- 
edge is sometimes static and sometimes dynamic. 
People often speak of "mental content," by which 
they mean all the knowledge belonging to a particular 
mind. Your mental content is made up of all the 
ideas that are either in your mind now, or have been 
there before and may be called up again by and by. 
Investigations have been made, for example, into the 
contents of the minds of school children. The mental 
content of a country child is found to be different 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

from that of a town child, and in comparing the 
two, the investigator makes a sort of inventory in 
each case and then compares the results. From this 
point of view we are clearly dealing with knowledge 
as static. Ideas are regarded as in a way the furni- 
ture of the mind, and just as we may make an in- 
ventory of tables and chairs and sideboards, so we 
may make an inventory of ideas of larks, and tram- 
cars, and hayricks, and asphalt pavements. When 
we make the outer inner, we are increasing our 
mental content. 

But ideas do not remain sedately where we put 
them, as chairs and tables do in a room. They are 
in continual movement, and would almost appear 
to have a life of their own. You will remember that 
ideas have been said to be "living creatures having 
hands and feet." This you will understand is noth- 
ing more than a figure of speech. Ideas do not have 
any power of their own apart from us. It is we who 
give them whatever force they have. But all the 
same, ideas will not do exactly what we would like 
them to do, for they are influenced by what goes on 
in the outer world. Ideas are related to one another 
in our mind in a particular way because the things 
outside that correspond to the ideas are related to 
one another in that same particular way. The idea 
of blue and the idea of tomato refuse to be joined 
together. It is true that we can, by the use of our 
imagination, make ideas behave in a way that does 
not correspond to what goes on in the outer world. 
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A Guide for All Students 

But we know all the time that if we are to make our- 
selves at home in our surroundings we must respect 
what takes place in the world of things. We must 
recognize facts. When we take in a fact and turn 
it into faculty, what has happened is that we have 
realized how certain elements in the outer world act 
in relation to one another, and that we have made up 
our minds to act accordingly. If we have a true idea 
of a dog, this means that we know how to behave 
intelligently when we meet dogs, or when people 
speak to us about dogs. The idea of dog is active 
to that extent. It is not a mere picture inside our 
mind : it is really our way of dealing with dogs. All 
the facts that we know about dogs have been turned 
into the faculty of behaving intelligently wherever 
dogs are concerned. 

It is worth noting that not all facts become faculty 
to the same degree. Many facts have so little bear- 
ing upon our life that they hardly seem to have any 
effect at all. You could sit down with a sheet of 
foolscap and in a few minutes fill it with facts about 
the room in which you are sitting, that are of no 
consequence to anyone, even to yourself. The facts 
that count are what may be called significant facts, 
facts that have a meaning, facts that are so related 
to other facts as to be capable of giving practical 
guidance in our thinking, acting or feeling. Now in 
our studies we are supposed to deal only with signifi- 
cant facts, facts that can and ought to be turned into 
faculty. No better test, indeed, could be applied to 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

discover whether certain subjects should be included 
in the school curriculum than the question: "Can 
and should the facts included under these subjects be 
turned into faculty?" The multiplication table, for 
example, certainly supplies facts that ought to be 
turned into faculty. We are different sorts of per- 
sons because we know these facts. It would be a 
different sort of world if seven times eight were 
sometimes fifty-six and sometimes sixty-four. 

These considerations give us some help when we 
come to our actual study. We find that, broadly 
speaking, our work is of two kinds. Sometimes 
our main business seems to be to acquire knowledge : 
certain matters are placed before us in books or by 
our teachers, and we are required to master them, to 
make them part of our stock of knowledge. At other 
times we are called upon to use the knowledge we 
already possess in order to attain some end that is 
set before us. In a general way, the two may be 
classed as acquisitive and constructive work. In 
Geography, for example, so long as we are merely 
learning the bare facts of the subject, the size and 
contours of the different continents, the political 
divisions, the natural features, we are at the acquisi- 
tive stage. We are making the outer inner. But 
when we go on to try to find out the reasons why 
certain facts that we have learnt should be as they 
are and not otherwise, we pass to the constructive 
stage. We are working constructively when we seek 
to discover why it is that great cities are so often 
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A Guide for All Students 

found on the banks of rivers, why peninsulas more 
frequently turn southward than northward, why the 
jute industry settled down in Dundee. You will 
readily realize that all this manipulation of knowl- 
edge and its application to new cases marks out what 
are called "problems" as the special sphere of con- 
structive study. In acquisition we depend largely 
upon the memory, in constructive work we depend 
more upon the reason. 

In our study we must not lose sight of the effect 
that our mental content produces upon the new mat- 
ter that is presented to it. We learn with our minds, 
no doubt, but we also learn by means of the knowl- 
edge we have already acquired. We receive and 
understand new facts in different ways according 
to our mental content. A big word is sometimes 
used to represent this action of the mind as modified 
by its acquired knowledge. This word is appercep- 
tion, and indicates the process by which our present 
knowledge acts upon any new fact that is presented 
to the mind. Some writers object to this word as 
being unnecessarily technical. They say that there 
is another word at present in use that will serve our 
purpose extremely well. They say that just as the 
mind takes in and acts upon knowledge, so the body 
takes in and acts upon food. Assimilation is the 
name given to the process by which the body takes 
in food, acts upon it, and makes some of it part of 
itself. Accordingly we need have no difficulty in 
accepting assimilation as a better word than acquisi- 
[8 9 ] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

tion to represent the process by which the mind takes 
in facts and transforms at least some of them into 
faculty. The new term emphasizes the point that 
the two processes, assimilation and construction, are 
not so widely opposed as the term acquisition would 
suggest. For purposes of exposition I began by 
using the term acquisition, because I wanted to make 
the contrast a sharp one, but now that we under- 
stand the two kinds of study better, we can fall 
back upon the more accurate term assimilation. 

For a very little reflection will make you see that 
while there is a distinct difference between the two 
kinds of study-work, they must not be regarded as 
entirely separate from or independent of each other: 
they are not mutually exclusive; they necessarily 
interpenetrate. Assimilation does not consist entirely 
in gathering in new facts, nor does construction 
confine itself to the manipulation and application of 
facts already acquired. The two processes to some 
extent overlap. In acquiring new facts we must 
always use a little reason; while in constructive 
work we cannot always rely upon having all the 
necessary matter ready to hand : we have frequently 
to stop our constructive work for a little in order to 
acquire some new facts that we find to be necessary. 
Thus we acquire a certain number of new facts 
while we are reasoning about things; and while we 
are engaged in acquiring new matter we must use 
our reason at least to some small extent. 

Students differ in the way they regard the two 
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A Guide for All Students 

forms of study. Assimilative work is generally 
regarded as easier than constructive. The more 
commonplace student rather likes to sit down de- 
liberately to master a certain amount of detail, to 
lay in a good store of definite information. He 
knows where he is with this sort of work. It does 
not exhaust him: he is not worried with that call 
for initiative that marks work of the constructive 
kind. On the other hand, many capable students 
find it almost intolerable to sit down and steadily 
amass material. They want rather to keep on 
applying material that they have already at their 
disposal. Now with such students it may be possible 
to arrange that they shall do most of their assimi- 
lation in the process of working out problems. 
Instead of sitting down systematically to acquire 
certain bits of knowledge which may then be applied 
to problems, they may begin with the problems and 
then acquire, as they need them, the necessary facts. 
In this case they would always have the stimulus 
of a definite purpose in acquiring any necessary 
piece of information. The danger of getting in- 
formation in this way is that there is almost certain 
to be various gaps left in the pupil's knowledge. The 
purely assimilative student ordinarily studies his sub- 
jects in a very systematic way, and thus secures 
that his facts are logically arranged and that there 
are no gaps. It is highly desirable, therefore, that 
those who prefer to acquire their knowledge in the 
active process of doing constructive work, should 
[9i] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

arrange for a short supplementary course extending 
over the ground covered by that constructive work, 
so that the inevitable gaps may be decently filled. 

Though of the two forms of study-work the 
assimilative is sometimes spoken of as being less 
important than the other, we must not forget that 
both are essential for a real mastery of any subject. 
We shall see later that for examination work tpo 
great importance is attached to the merely assimila- 
tive side, though even in examinations there is now 
a tendency to change matters so as to give greater 
prominence to the constructive side. But apart from 
examination requirements, there is need for the 
somewhat more systematic study involved in the 
ordinary assimilative process. If we do nothing but 
use material already acquired, and add new material 
only incidentally, we run the danger of getting a 
one-sided view of certain subjects, and of missing 
some facts that, though not likely to be disclosed in 
the constructive process, yet would be of great value 
in giving a fresh direction to that process. In any 
case, the man who desires to have a really all-round 
acquaintance with a subject must be prepared to 
devote a certain amount of time to the direct acquisi- 
tion of facts as facts. 

Some subjects lend themselves specially to the 
constructive form of study. These are they in which 
from certain known facts it is possible to infer a 
great many more. In such subjects we are continu- 
ally making assumptions with regard to the matter 
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A Guide for All Students 

in hand, and proceeding to verify or correct these 
assumptions. This is really a process of guessing, 
carried on under legitimate conditions. As a rule, 
schoolmasters and professors have a deadly animos- 
ity against guessing. It is their custom to complain 
bitterly about foolish answers as the result of mere 
guessing. But the introduction of the word mere 
makes an important difference, for it implies that 
there is a kind of guessing that is not open to 
obloquy. Indeed, we have to recognize the fact that 
in their ordinary work students are guessing very 
nearly all the time. Unless they are dealing with 
matters that they have learned by the mere process 
of assimilation, all their answers are reached by a 
system of guesswork. It is true that this guessing 
has a sound foundation, and is, in fact, the only way 
in which real progress can be made. If a question 
is put in such a way that we are able to remember 
the exact answer that we know it requires, we can 
answer with the certainty of being right. But in 
most of our other answers we have little more than 
a feeling of probability. 

It has to be admitted that in certain lines of 
reasoning we are able to come to conclusion after 
conclusion with certainty, even though we have 
never had occasion to deal with the matters in ques- 
tion on any previous occasion. Such is the state of 
affairs when we are concerned with what is techni- 
cally known as reasoning. This consists in the 
application of certain very vague but universal laws 
[93] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

of thinking, usually known as the Laws of Thought 
as Thought. When these laws are written out they 
appear to be very empty and formal, and indeed to 
be somewhat silly, or at the best superfluous. 

The first of these portentous laws is known as the 
Law of Identity, which maintains that whatever is, 
is ; or that A is A. It is sometimes represented by 
the formula, that does not seem to get us much 
further forward, A = A. 

The second is called the Law of Non-Contradic- 
tion: it runs — whatever is contradictory is unthink- 
able. It, too, has a formula : A — not - A =■ O. Or 
if this does not please you, then you may choose: 
A — A = O. To help you to attach some meaning 
to these perplexing formulae, you may take as an 
example the fact that any statement you may make 
cannot be true and false at the same time, and tested 
in the same way. We have to put in those two 
qualifications, since it is possible, for example, for 
John Smith to be both guilty and not guilty of the 
murder of Richard Robinson. He may have known 
that Robinson was about to walk during a fog over a 
railway bridge that had been broken in the middle 
during a recent gale. By giving no warning, Smith 
was morally guilty of murdering Robinson. But 
since, as a matter of fact, Smith had done nothing at 
all in the matter, he is not legally guilty of the mur- 
der. In the same way, a watch may be both right 
and wrong at the same moment : right with the town 
clock, but wrong by the Greenwich standard. 
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A Guide for All Students 

The third law is that of the Excluded Third, or 
the Excluded Middle. This tells us that of two 
repugnant notions that cannot both exist together, 
one or other of them must exist. It has been thus 
expressed: "Of contradictory attributions we can 
affirm only one of a thing; and if one be explicitly 
affirmed, the other is implicitly denied. A either is 
or is not. A either is or is not B." Either there are 
mermaids or there are not mermaids. There is no 
intermediate state. John Smith cannot in the eyes 
of the law be both guilty and not guilty of the 
murder of Richard Robinson, but he must be one 
or the other. 

Now I do not expect that you will have the least 
inclination to question any of these laws. You 
could not break them even if you tried. What 
troubles you, no doubt, is that you do not quite see 
the necessity to state them at all. They seem so 
empty as to be quite useless. And yet it is because 
these laws are there and cannot be broken that we 
can argue with one another and be quite sure that 
our minds will work uniformly. 

But if we must all obey these Laws of Thought as 
Thought, and if all our minds work uniformly on the 
same principles, how does it come about that we ever 
reach different conclusions? Have you ever con- 
sidered how it is that an honest Radical and an 
honest Conservative, from an examination of the 
same facts, come to diametrically opposite conclu- 
sions? From what we have said about these laws, 
[95] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

we might naturally expect that from the same facts 
only one conclusion could be drawn, and if it de- 
pended merely on the laws, this would be true; but 
other things have to be taken into consideration. The 
English philosopher John Locke was of the opinion 
that two men must come to the same conclusion on 
any subject if the following conditions were ob- 
served : ( i ) they must know all the circumstances of 
the case; (2) they must be free from bias; (3) they 
must give their minds seriously to the subject. Men 
differ in their opinions because they cannot observe 
all these conditions, and in fact, when we look into 
the matter, we find that very few people observe 
any one of them. 

It is obviously impossible for any man to hope to 
know all the circumstances of any case, for this 
would really imply that he knew all about everything 
in the universe : since, after all, everything is related 
to everything else in some way or other, however 
remote. It would be enough, indeed, if our honest 
Radical and our honest Conservative knew exactly 
the same facts, but even this is all but impossible, 
since all the knowledge that each possesses about 
other things would affect his knowledge about the 
particular facts that are under discussion on any 
one occasion. 

But the second condition is quite as hard to fulfil. 

It is almost impossible for a man to empty himself of 

his preferences and dislikes. He may make the most 

strenuous efforts to keep a perfectly fair mind, yet he 

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A Guide for All Students 

will find that his likes and dislikes do come in and 
interfere with the soundness of his decision. It has 
to be remembered that this does not mean that he 
always favours his own side. The effort to be quite 
fair may result in the Radical or the Conservative 
giving an unfair advantage to the view he dislikes. 
When a fair man gives to an opponent the benefit of 
the doubt, it almost always means that the opponent 
is getting the advantage of a bias. Thus in the 
effort to be fair to all his pupils, a schoolmaster who 
has a son in his class is apt to be more severe on his 
son than on the other boys. 

It is when we come to the third condition that 
there is hope, for the honest man can at least give 
his mind to the subject. Most of the opinions of the 
ordinary man come to him more or less ready-made. 
He accepts the opinions of others, or if he strikes out 
on his own account, he often does so after a merely 
superficial examination of the facts of the case. As 
a student, it is your first business to give your mind 
seriously to all those matters submitted to you on 
which you are expected to pass an opinion. In the 
purely assimilative process you may, under certain 
conditions, regard the material supplied as already 
guaranteed, but the moment you enter upon con- 
structive work you must be prepared to give your 
mind to a critical examination of the matters pre- 
sented to you. 

So long as we are working within the realm of the 
Laws of Thought we can be quite certain of our 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

answers. We have no need to hesitate. There is no 
room for guesswork. If I am told that, at the age of 
seventy-two, John Locke died in the same year that 
the Battle of Blenheim was fought, and that this 
battle was fought in the year 1 704, there is no guess- 
work whatever in my saying that he was born in the 
year 1632. Thackeray tells a story about an abbe 
who called upon a certain count, and while waiting 
for the arrival of the host did his best to amuse the 
count's other guests by telling them of some of his 
experiences. He mentioned how interesting it was 
to hear the confessions of sinners, and added 
piquancy to his talk by saying that his first penitent 
was a murderer. When the count arrived he was 
very glad to see his friend, and turning to his guests, 
remarked that the abbe was one of his oldest friends. 
"In fact," he concluded, "I was the abbe's first 
penitent." The guests could draw only one conclu- 
sion. The count had proclaimed himself a murderer. 
There was no possible room for doubt. 

But we are not always in a position to adopt this 
tone of certainty. We have to balance one thing 
against another, and come to a conclusion that seems 
on the whole the most probable in the circumstances. 
This process of trying to get at the truth by estimat- 
ing probabilities is not open to the objections usually 
brought against guessing. If you are asked some 
question the answer to which you do not know, and 
make a shot at random, this is guessing, and is 
objectionable. But if you have some reason for giv- 
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A Guide for All Students 

ing one answer rather than any other, you cannot be 
said to be guessing in the bad sense of that term, 
even though you are not at all sure that your answer 
is right. Guessing in the better sense of the term 
may be said to be the jumping to a conclusion on 
insufficient grounds, but with a full knowledge of 
the uncertainty of the result. The conclusion is the 
best we can reach with the material at our disposal. 
This form of guessing is not to be discouraged. It 
is a step towards the solution of a problem, as is 
suggested in the lines : 

"The golden guess, 
That's morning star to the fair round of truth." 

What scientific men call hypothesis is merely a care- 
fully guarded form of guessing. If we assume a 
certain state of affairs such as seems likely to explain 
a particular fact, and then test the state of affairs to 
see how far it does explain the fact and how far it is 
consistent with what we know of other things, we 
are said to form an hypothesis and to test it. Between 
the random shot with no justification and the rea- 
soned certainty that we have in applying the Laws 
of Thought there is to be found a wide range of 
answers of varying degrees of certainty, and the 
manipulation of this doubtful region is the realm of 
practical thinking. 

By practical thinking we mean that kind that 
leads to new knowledge. There is a kind of thinking 
that consists in bringing out clearly what is implied 
[99] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

in what we know already. When we think in this 
way, we are said to think deductively, and we have 
the encouraging assurance that in deduction we can- 
not go wrong. If we are assured that all dogs have 
the 'heart divided into four compartments and that 
our Caesar is a dog, then we can infer with absolute 
certainty that our Caesar has his heart divided into 
four compartments. Here we pass from two state- 
ments called premises to a third statement called a 
conclusion, with the absolute conviction that if the 
premises are true the conclusion cannot help being 
true. If all great admirals are blind of one eye, and 
if Blake is a great admiral, then nothing can shake 
the belief of the deductive logician that Blake has 
only one eye. It is of no use pointing out cases of 
great admirals who are not blind of an eye. The 
logician repeats, "If all great admirals," etc., then 
Blake must be blind of an eye. If the premises are 
true the conclusion must be true : but for the truth 
of the premises the logician of this type does not 
hold himself responsible. Let others see to that. 

It is in securing the truth of the premises that we 
engage in what we have called practical thinking. If 
we confine ourselves to deductive logic, we shall 
certainly never make any mistakes. We shall attain 
to greater clearness about what we already know, 
and this is rather an important matter; but we shall 
make no progress : we shall never get any further 
forward. The kind of logic that takes a little risk of 
error, but promises a chance of progress, is called 
[ioo] 



A Guide for All Students 

inductive. All our reasoning in deductive logic de- 
pends upon the truth of the statement that, "what- 
ever is true of a whole class is true of every member 
of that class." No one can deny this truth. It is 
self-evident. When we say that every member of a 
class possesses certain qualities it is only saying the 
same thing over again to maintain that any one 
member of that class possesses these qualities. 

In induction there is a corresponding general state- 
ment on which all our reasoning is based, and this is 
that nature acts uniformly: that is, that whatever 
happens under certain conditions will happen again 
in exactly the same way if all the conditions are 
repeated exactly as they existed in the first case. Our 
belief in the uniformity of nature is strong. All our 
experience strengthens us in our faith in the uni- 
formity with which she works, but we do not have 
that absolute certainty that we have about the work- 
ings of deductive logic. These depend on the applica- 
tions of the Laws of Thought as Thought, and we 
have found that no one can even think of denying 
these. In induction, on the other hand, we depend 
practically on our experience, and our experience 
frequently misleads us, because we are not always 
able to interpret it aright. Men's experience showed 
them for centuries that swans were always white, but 
by and by it was found that the swans in Australia 
are black. So that centuries of experience are not 
enough to make us quite sure of conclusions that we 
reach by induction. 

[IOI] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

The black swan supplies a very good illustration 
of the working of the two kinds of logic. With a 
black swan before him, the deductive logician goes 
through his ceremonial: 

All swans are white. 

This creature is a swan. 

Therefore this creature is white. 

The common-sense person objects that the creature 
is obviously black. All that the deductive logician 
has to say is that if it is black it is not a swan, and he 
is quite right : for deductive logic always starts with 
an agreement about the terms used. It is quite true 
that if the term swan includes among the other 
recognized qualities that of whiteness, then the black- 
ness of this creature precludes it from sharing the 
name of swan with other creatures that do fit in with 
the definition deliberately adopted. It is left for the 
inductive logician to point out that this black crea- 
ture has all the other qualities that are essential to 
swanhood, and that therefore the definition of swan 
should be so changed as to include this black 
specimen. 

We thus see that Induction takes upon itself to 
modify premises. It seeks to provide new material 
that enables us to pass on to new generalizations. 
Naturally it wants to be as sure of its ground as 
is possible under the circumstances. It cannot get 
rid of all chance of error, and must be prepared for 
occasional mistakes, but by taking reasonable pre- 
cautions it reduces the chance of error to a minimum. 
[ 102] 



A Guide for All Students 

One of the chief precautions is to see that we do not 
draw an induction from too few cases. We want to 
have a great number of examples before we come to 
a general conclusion. A child lets a book fall and 
finds that the binding has been injured, and that part 
of the paper pasted on the inside of the cover has 
been torn off, revealing a picture underneath. The 
picture happens to be there merely because the binder, 
in using scrap-paper, chanced upon a bit that had 
a picture on it. The child, however, being unac- 
quainted with the conditions of wise induction, at 
once jumps to the conclusion that if you remove the 
paper from the inside of the covers of a book you 
will disclose a picture. After injuring a few books 
without disclosing another picture, the child finds it 
necessary to reverse his first decision, and thus learns 
one of his first lessons in applying the inductive 
method. 

There must be a sufficient number of cases to 
warrant us in drawing a conclusion, but however 
great the number of cases we can never be quite sure 
that an exception may not occur at any moment ; so 
we must be prepared to consider whether there is any 
value in a rule to which there are exceptions. Ob- 
viously such a rule may be of the greatest practical 
service. It is very important to know how to behave 
"in most cases," even if we cannot reach a rule that 
will work in all cases. It is only natural that the 
fewer the exceptions to a given rule, the greater 
reliance may be placed on that rule. Yet it is just 
[ 103] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

those rules that have very few exceptions that are 
most apt to lead us into serious difficulties. For in 
cases of this kind we are apt to depend too much 
on the rule. It works almost always with excellent 
results, but when it does fail we are apt to be led to 
disaster; whereas, with a rule that is less reliable, 
we are always more or less on our guard, and there- 
fore less likely to make a complete smash. 

There is another consideration that ought to have 
weight with us in our use of induction. We must 
take account of the natural connexion between dif- 
ferent phenomena. If on three different occasions 
we return from a week-end visit to an aunt to find 
that something has gone wrong with the plumber- 
work of our house, we will do wisely to content our- 
selves with a remark on the curious coincidence. 
There is no natural connexion between aunts and 
plumber-work. But if, after each of the three occa- 
sions on which we have eaten a new kind of cereal 
food, we experience an internal pain, we are entitled 
to connect the food with the pain and to take 
measures accordingly. Food and internal pain are 
frequently related to one another as cause and effect. 
Superficial resemblances, too, are apt to produce mis- 
leading conceptions. Thus it is not uncommon for 
a child to think that milk is white because it comes 
from a white cow, if the first cow that comes into his 
experience is of that colour. Such a child will often 
express great surprise the first time that he sees white 
milk coming from a brown cow. 
[ 104] 



A Guide for All Students 

This last example suggests a special kind of induc- 
tion that is of practical interest because it is so 
frequently used in ordinary life. It is called analogy, 
and has given rise to an inordinate amount of quar- 
relling among philosophers. Here we need not enter 
into the details of the arguments about its exact 
nature. For practical purposes it may be marked off 
from ordinary induction by the fact that while in- 
duction is based upon a great number of different 
cases in which the same law is seen at work, analogy 
is usually regarded as limited to two cases that 
resemble each other in a certain number of points, 
and because of this resemblance are assumed to be 
alike in certain other points. If we compare the 
planet Mars with the earth and find that the two 
resemble each other in a great many respects, such 
as size, rotation, distribution of land and water, 
conditions of temperature and atmosphere, we may 
by analogy infer that Mars has inhabitants somewhat 
like ourselves. As a rule, analogy does not lead to a 
very definite conclusion, but is rather useful in indi- 
cating general similarities and probable uniformities. 
The great danger of analogy is that of choosing two 
cases that have a certain number of resemblances 
that are really superficial, and drawing conclusions 
as if the two cases were fundamentally alike. We 
are very apt to carry over from the one case to the 
other, elements that are quite incongruous in the new 
set of circumstances to which they are transferred. 
Thus, when it is argued that under our present laws 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

a wife is merely an unpaid servant, elements are 
introduced in the case of the wife that are quite 
foreign to the case of the servant. The important 
point to be kept in view in analogy is that it is 
sufficient if the two cases can be shown to be parallel 
in the points that are essential to the matter under 
discussion. If, for example, the flow of ideas 
through the mind is compared to a stream it is a 
silly objection to say that this is incorrect, since 
ideas are not wet. 

We have seen that by experience, observation, in- 
duction and analogy we. acquire certain materials 
for the framing of premises by means of which we 
may reach clearly expressed conclusions. But in the 
course of our ordinary life we are not so much con- 
cerned with finding out and enunciating general 
truths as in making practical applications of these 
truths. No doubt these general truths are there, but 
they are very frequently acted upon without being 
clearly realized, and practical persons are sometimes 
inclined rather to pride themselves on not troubling 
with general principles, and on confining themselves 
to methods that they have found to work. This is 
the attitude of the person who works by rule of 
thumb, and by the results of actual experience un- 
guided by thought. People of this type who have 
acquired a knowledge of big words like to call them- 
selves empirics : other people call them quacks. 

It has to be remembered that it is possible to use 
all the machinery of thought and remain intensely 
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A Guide for All Students 

practical. What is commonly called practical think- 
ing is differentiated from any other kind of thinking 
only by the fact that it has a definite practical end 
which is obvious to other people. But there is only 
one kind of thinking, whether the process ends in 
discovering the best way of mending a boot, or in the 
solution of a metaphysical problem. Thinking has 
been defined in many ways, but the definition that 
best suits our present purpose is "the application of 
means to ends, so long as we work by means of 
ideas." We cannot be said to think when we merely 
fumble. If the clock on the mantelpiece has stopped, 
and we have no idea how to make it go again, but 
mildly shake it in the hope that something will happen 
to set it going, we are merely fumbling. But if, on 
moving the clock gently so as to set the pendulum in 
motion, we hear it wobbling about irregularly, and at 
the same time observe that there is no ticking of any 
kind, we come to the conclusion that the pendulum 
has somehow or other escaped the little catch that 
connects it with the mechanism, we have been really 
thinking. From the fact that the pendulum wobbles 
irregularly we infer that it has lost its proper catch, 
From the fact that there is no ticking at all we infer 
the same thing, for even when there is something 
wrong with the clock that will prevent it from going 
permanently, if the pendulum is set in motion by 
force from without it will tick for a few seconds 
before it comes to rest again. The important point 
to observe is that there must be inference. This is 
[ 107] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

always indicated by the word therefore or its equiva- 
lent. If you reach a conclusion without having to 
use or at any rate imply a thetefore, you may take it 
for granted that you have not been really thinking, 
but only jumping to conclusions. 

Not all fitting of means to ends is thinking. The 
story is told of a man who set out with his dog to 
have a sail. His boat was about a mile from home, 
and when he reached it he was disappointed to find 
it three-quarters full of water. His chagrin was 
increased when he found that the dipper was not 
there, so that it was impossible to bale out the water. 
Unwilling to walk the mile home to fetch the dipper, 
he thought he would enlist the services of the dog. 
Looking at the animal, he put his hollowed hand into 
the water and threw out a handful or two, in the hope 
that the dog would understand that the dipper was 
needed. The dog nodded, went home, and returned 
with the dipper. This is so wonderful that the 
ordinary reader is apt to be a little incredulous. But 
the story is vouched for by a competent psychologist 
whose comment, however, is that it was not a case of 
thinking at all, but only the completing of a picture 
previously seen by the dog. On many previous 
occasions the dog had seen the same picture — his 
master, the boat, the water, the dipper, the water 
being thrown out. The picture on this occasion was 
incomplete, for the dipper was lacking. What the 
dog did was merely to complete the picture to which 
he had become accustomed. He was fitting means 
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A Guide for All Students 

to ends no doubt, but not by the use of ideas. There 
was no therefore in the case. Had there been real 
thinking, it would have gone something like this. 
The dog reaches home, and to his disappointment 
does not find the dipper in the outhouse where he 
expected to see it. There is nothing that looks 
sufficiently like the dipper to be substituted for it on 
its mere general resemblance. Is there anything else 
that will serve the master's purpose ? Well, there is 
the sponge in the bath-room. If it were dipped in 
the water it would take up a great deal, which might 
then be squeezed out, and in this way the boat might 
be emptied almost as quickly with the sponge as 
with the dipper. Had the dog acted upon these 
considerations and returned with the sponge, the 
exacting psychologist would have admitted that 
there had been a case of thinking. 



[ 109] 



CHAPTER V 



MODE OF STUDY 

WHEN you go into your study you intend to 
work with your mind, but you must bring 
your body along, and the problem is how to deal 
with it during the study period. The least you can 
do, one would think, is to treat it as you would any 
other visitor, and offer it a chair. But not every 
one is of this opinion. There are those who point 
out that it is more profitable to stand than to sit 
while studying, and there are others who go still 
further, and maintain that a certain amount of gentle 
motion stimulates the brain. Some students walk 
up and down the room as they study, while others 
content themselves with some nervous motion or 
other, such as fidgeting with their hands, resting 
now on the right leg, now on the left, moving the 
head from side to side, twirling a pencil between 
the fingers — there is no end to the vagaries. 

Now this is one of those cases in which it is 
dangerous to lay down hard and fast rules. What 
is excellent for one, may be disastrous for another, 
[no] 



A Guide for All Students 

All that we can do is to consider the matter as a 
whole, indicate what suits the greater number of 
persons, and leave you to make your own applica- 
tions. 

A good deal depends upon whether you have a 
room of your own. If you have to study along 
with some one else, or worse still, have to study 
while there are other people in the room doing the 
ordinary things that people who are not students 
are in the habit of doing, your problem is greatly 
complicated. If you are with another student you 
must make a treaty with him offensive and defen- 
sive, by which certain fixed study periods are to 
be regarded as sacred from all interruptions, and 
during which nothing less than sudden illness or 
an alarm of fire will justify the opening of a con- 
versation. Your time-table must be the result of 
agreement with your fellow, and must be made the 
basis of the treaty. How far you should enter upon 
cooperative work is a matter for serious consider- 
ation. A partnership in study almost invariably 
resolves itself into one of the partners becoming 
the teacher, and the other the pupil. This is not 
so serious a drawback as it looks, for the student 
who turns out to be the tutor does not really lose : he 
proves the truth of the Latin tag discimus docendo, 
for .by teaching he learns : while the student who 
becomes pupil has obviously no right to complain. 
A partnership is inadvisable in the case of great 
inequality in ability or attainments between the two 
[in] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

students. Here the pupil-partner becomes an unfair 
drag upon the teacher-partner. 

A studying partnership has to be carefully 
manipulated. There is a strong tendency to an un- 
wise division of labour. One partner will keep the 
text in his hand and try to worry out the meaning, 
while his friend attends to the dictionary and looks 
up all the necessary words. The result is that by 
and by each becomes a specialist, and does his part 
of the work exceptionally well, while he is all at sea 
in the work of the other. In a case like this, the two 
become a kind of compound unit, a sort of social 
molecule made up of two formerly independent 
atoms. If the object of the partnership were the 
production of good translations in the shortest time, 
then the partnership would be justified; but since 
the purpose is that each should become a well- 
developed all-around scholar, the plan of working 
must be modified. There must be alternation in 
the distribution of work, so that each acquires facility 
in all branches. 

There is sometimes a very real advantage in co- 
operative study between fairly well matched students, 
even if they do not have to work together because 
of the necessity of using the same room. This is 
particularly the case with private students. There 
are many points on which mutual criticism is of the 
utmost value, even though neither is an authority 
on the subjects studied. The value of a fresh eye 
on our difficulties is great. We have seen the value 

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A Guide for All Students 

of a co-worker in the chapter on Memory, and we 
shall find other cases under Reading and elsewhere. 
Further there are many occasions on which we re- 
quire to get an outsider to state a case, or to suggest 
a datum for a problem. The private student is 
sometimes in the position of those pitiable people 
who play games against themselves — left hand 
against right — in which the whole process is vitiated 
by the fact that the plans of both sides are known 
to both players. A study partner may be as welcome 
to a student as an opponent to an enthusiastic chess- 
player eager for a game. Not the least of the func- 
tions of the student-partner is the service he renders 
as a sort of external conscience. We are much more 
easily satisfied with our own excuses for slackness 
than our partner is likely to be. Just as a man's 
wife is often an objective conscience to him, so a 
student's partner may do much to keep him up to 
a high level of endeavour. 

But while we can thus turn to a positive advantage 
the presence of a fellow student in our room, it is a 
case of making the best of a bad job when we have 
to share a room with other people who have no 
special concern with our studies. If you have to 
work in the common living room at home, you will 
at least have the advantage of some degree of sym- 
pathy with your work. If there are other members 
of the family who have to be studying at the same 
time, you will probably be in a position to demand 
a fair degree of quietness from those who are not 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

studying. A common room of this kind is a useful 
arena for struggles in self-sacrifice. But it also 
offers many opportunities for intelligent manipula- 
tion. You have to examine very carefully all the 
conditions of the case — especially the times and needs 
of the other members of the family. There is one 
outlet that is nearly always available unless the 
family is very poor indeed. This is the somewhat 
unpalatable expedient of early rising. If you have 
to work along with younger brothers and sisters, 
and find that you cannot make real progress, you 
will find that by going early to bed and getting up 
very early in the morning you are likely to find all 
the solitude you want. The one condition is the cost 
of a fire on the winter mornings — the kindling of 
the fire would be of course your contribution. 

Coming now, however, to the case of the student 
who has a little room for his own use, we have to 
settle the question of the disposal of the body. 
Speaking generally it is better to sit than to stand. 
To be sure it is highly desirable to have the means 
of standing for a little now and then to relieve the 
weariness resulting from long continued sitting. If 
you can afford a sloping desk-table that is just 
breast high you will find it a great boon for general 
reading, but particularly for consulting dictionaries 
and other heavy volumes. The table need consist 
of nothing but four legs and a sloping board, but 
the board should have a rim at the lower end to 
prevent books from slipping off. 
[ ii4] 



A Guide for All Students 

With regard to the kind of seat you ought to 
have, there is a difference of opinion. The first view 
is that we ought to treat our body severely. People 
do not put the matter quite so plainly as this, but 
what is clearly at the back of their minds is that 
for sound study the body ought to be a little uncom- 
fortable. The opposite view naturally is that the 
body ought to be made as comfortable as possible, 
so that the mind may be left perfectly free to do 
its hard work. But neither view can be pushed to 
extremity. No one nowadays would maintain that 
the body should be made positively uncomfortable 
so as to help in study, though there was a time when 
such a view would not have been considered un- 
reasonable. On the other hand, no one would recom- 
mend that the body should be pampered. The truth 
naturally lies between the two. We must not be 
positively comfortable: that is we must not be so 
comfortable as to be tempted to think about how 
comfortable we are. You may be quite comfortable 
sitting in an ordinary armchair, but if it is so deli- 
ciously padded that you want to snuggle into it, so 
as to enjoy it the more, it has passed the stage of 
respectable comfort. As a matter of fact the chair 
in which you do your ordinary study should have no 
cushion at all, unless you find the lack of a cushion 
positively uncomfortable. For, after all, it is your 
body that has got to be considered, not the body of 
any one who comes along to give you advice. He 
may prefer a hard chair when engaged in serious 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

work. You may find such a chair a hindrance. The 
principle to determine the matter is that everything 
should be done to secure that the body does not make 
its presence felt at all, either by discomfort or by 
comfort so exuberant as to call attention to itself. 

The attitude adopted during study is of some 
consequence. There is a subtle connection between 
the attitude of the body and that of the mind. 
Edward Thring, the distinguished Head Master of 
Uppingham, used to speak often about "the potency 
of attitude," and pointed out that a boy who came 
up to the blackboard with his hands in his pockets 
did not attack a problem in geometry with anything 
like the same effectiveness as his fellow who held 
himself erect, and looked as if he meant business. 
Probably Buffon, the celebrated French naturalist, 
carried this theory too far when he made a point 
of always doing his writing in full court dress, 
sword and all. Yet there is a certain connection 
between the official dress, and the stately style of this 
writer. There is said to be a sort of dressing-gown 
frame of mind that is apt to be put on along with 
that soothing garment. Naturally it is out of the 
question to lay down any hard and fast rules for the 
dress of students. The days of sumptuary laws are 
gone for ever : but there is no harm in calling atten- 
tion to possible dangers. If your temperament is 
such as to be greatly modified by your immediate 
surroundings, it will be to your interest to keep an 
eye on your attitude as you set about your studies. 
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A Guide for All Students 

Better study has been done in old clothes than 
was ever done in court dress, but a slovenly attitude 
is not necessarily an accompaniment of old clothes, 
and such an attitude is apt to induce a slovenly 
mental attitude to match. Besides, slovenly attitudes 
in over-easy arm-chairs are apt to have an unwhole- 
some effect even from a purely hygienic point of 
view. You must be allowed to adopt whatever 
attitude you find from intelligent experiment to be 
the best for your particular case. But you will be 
well advised to give a long trial to an attitude that 
suggests as well as accompanies alertness of mind. 

Assuming that you have hit upon the happy mean 
between discomfort and luxury, your next problem 
is how to carry on the actual process of study. You 
have your books, your papers, and your prescribed 
work. You have planned out your time, and you 
know that you have forty minutes to master a par- 
ticular bit of work. Let us assume that this is a 
case of study that is mainly assimilative. You have 
to "get up" the reign of Henry VII of England in 
such a way as will justify the statement that "Modern 
History in England begins with the reign of Henry 
VII." You have read the reign in a general way 
during a previous course, so your present study 
takes the form of revision, with the additional in- 
centive of a definite thesis to be maintained. You 
will first glance over the various paragraphs to 
revive your general impression of the whole, then 
you will select certain paragraphs for special atten- 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

tion. You pass rapidly over everything that treats 
merely of local and temporary interests — revolts, 
personations and what not — and fix your attention 
on the big things. You note that America was dis- 
covered in 1492, that the Renaissance which may be 
said to have begun in the middle of the fifteenth 
century was producing its fruit when Henry came 
to the throne, that the Reformation was making 
headway on the Continent, greatly aided by the 
spread of books resulting from the development of 
printing, that the increased use of artillery had 
brought the knight down almost to the level of the 
ordinary man-at-arms on the battle field. But all 
this you feel does not specially concern England, so 
you continue the search for something that brings 
this material to bear upon English life, and you 
find it in the decay of the power of the old nobility, 
through the general cause of the new conditions of 
warfare, and the cause, special to England, of the 
decimation of the noble families through the sangui- 
nary struggles of the Wars of the Roses. You 
give a fresh revision to the paragraphs that deal 
with the enforcement of the Statute of Liveries, and 
the revival of the criminal jurisdiction of the Crown, 
the New Learning, the Oxford Reformers; and now 
you feel that you have enough matter to sustain the 
thesis that with Henry VII began such a set of new 
problems as entitles us to say that modern history 
begins in England with his reign. 

In all this your mind has moved backwards and 
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A Guide for All Students 

forwards over the whole field, pausing sometimes 
here and sometimes there. Some paragraphs have 
had much more of your forty minutes than the 
others, some have been passed over almost unread. 
The dominating purpose of the study has been to 
select the proper material and deal with its different 
elements in the order of their importance. 

If your purpose had been to master the reign of 
Henry VII as a whole and for the first time, you 
would have proceeded differently, since this would 
have been a case of purely assimilative study. In 
such a case you would read over the whole rapidly, 
but of course not carelessly, in order to get a general 
idea of it. Then you would select certain paragraphs 
for a second reading because of their difficulty, or 
because your first reading showed them to be im- 
portant. Next you would read the whole over again, 
giving as before special attention to the important 
paragraphs and noting anything that seemed to call 
for special treatment. Then you would proceed to 
ask yourself certain questions about the whole, and 
test whether you could answer them. Usually as you 
advance in a lesson of this kind you have to con- 
centrate more and more on the uninteresting. Much 
of the striking material you master in the first 
reading. It is a very common mistake in preparing 
such a lesson as this to re-read the whole reign 
several times in succession, giving the same atten- 
tion to all the parts, the easy getting the same atten- 
tion as the difficult. The secret of study is to seize 
[ii9l 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

upon the important and the difficult parts, and 
concentrate upon them. 

You must of course realize that your work will be 
judged by your success in mastering your subject. 
The test of study is not how long or how hard you 
have studied, but what you have attained by your 
study. There is nothing that a half-conscientious 
schoolboy likes better than to get a definite ruling 
from his teacher about the amount of time to be 
given to a particular lesson. He will innocently 
ask how often he ought to read over his history 
lesson, or how frequently he should repeat his multi- 
plication table in order to satisfy the demands of 
the school. The wise teacher never gives a definite 
numerical answer to such questions. If he does, 
the boy will in all probability accept his decision 
and loyally go over the lesson the exact number of 
times recommended. But the chances are that the 
number of repetitions bulks too largely in his mind. 
The responsibility is somehow shifted on to the 
teacher, if only the required number of repetitions 
is given. If next day the boy breaks down, he 
may not make any open complaint to the teacher, 
but in his heart he thinks that he has been badly 
treated. Accordingly the wise teacher answers all 
such demands for a numerical prescription by telling 
the pupil that he will have to go over the lesson 
often enough to master it. The responsibility must 
be left with the pupil. 

The interesting thing is that the intelligent pupil 
L 120] 



A Guide for All Students 

does know when he has mastered a particular bit 
of work. Without doubt you have felt this in your 
own experience. You have been working at a par- 
ticular matter — not necessarily a problem with a 
definite "solution" that is recognized as right the 
moment it has been reached — for half an hour; 
almost suddenly you realize that you have mastered 
the position : you "know" the lesson. A few minutes 
before, you were quite well aware that you did not 
know it, but now the conviction has come to you 
that you do know it. No one can help you in such 
things. You must learn to know your own processes 
by experience. To some extent this applies also to 
the way in which you set about learning anything. 
It appears that we all differ in our mode of learning, 
and our teachers cannot lay down any very definite 
directions that we ought all to follow. In some 
cases, however, they can give definite instruction 
about how to carry out a particular bit of work. 

On one occasion a teacher told his class that had 
just begun the study of formal Geography to "Draw 
a map of England." This was not a very wise 
proceeding. The pupils had never drawn a map 
before; most of them were quite at sea, and had no 
idea how to begin. I can tell you exactly how one 
of them began. He examined the map in his atlas, 
and noticed that it was made up of a great number 
of little rectangles. He did not know that these 
were made by the crossing of the meridians and the 
parallels of latitude. So he carefully measured off 

[121] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

each of these little rectangles, and completed as much 
of England as lay within each. In other words he 
proceeded to make a map of England as if it were 
a sort of geographical crazy quilt. The teacher told 
the class afterwards that he could not understand 
how any boy could be so stupid as to do such a thing. 
But this complaint was not very sensible. It is a 
teacher's business to understand how pupils can do 
stupid things. But it is also your business, so far 
as you take yourself in hand, to learn to avoid 
foolish beginnings like this little boy's. He did not 
really face the problem as a whole. A careful 
examination of his atlas would have shown him 
that England was not made up of separate seg- 
ments : that there was a continuity of outline : that 
the thin lines making up the rectangles were con- 
tinuous, and that these lines could be most comfort- 
ably drawn by measuring the spaces between them 
at the top and at the bottom of the map, and then 
joining by straight lines the marks made at the top 
with the corresponding marks at the bottom. The 
same thing being done with the horizontal lines, he 
would have found the little rectangles very useful 
as guiding lines in his drawing out the contour. 

We shall have other examples of the folly of 
beginning a problem with no knowledge of what is 
really wanted. The teacher cannot be expected to 
state every detail of a problem, but the problem 
itself must be made quite clear, and the pupil should 
never be in the least doubt about what is required 
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A Guide for All Students 

of him. Though the teacher cannot be expected to 
give detailed instructions about the working out of 
problems, he can at least give some very general 
directions that are applicable to all cases of study. 
For example, he can warn his pupils against the 
most dangerous habit of all — the habit of inattention. 
When we say that a person's wits are wool-gather- 
ing, we mean that his mind has wandered away 
from the matters in hand. No human being will 
ever succeed in study or in anything else who allows 
this habit to grow upon him. This does not mean 
that we must be on the stretch all the time, that we 
must never allow the mind to wander at ease among 
the 'things of the past and the distant. There is a 
place for reverie; and even day-dreaming is not 
altogether to be condemned. The important thing is 
that during the period that you profess to be studying 
you must study. Wool-gathering during study-time 
is fatal to all chance of success. One hour's 
strenuous study is worth three during which there 
are occasional lapses into reverie or day-dreaming. 
Students are very apt to point out how many hours 
they study per day. But this is meaningless unless 
we understand what kind of study it has been. It 
is quite possible to read a book and to turn over 
the pages systematically as you reach the bottom 
of each, and yet to know nothing of what you are 
reading. A student of the wool-gathering type may 
be reading a textbook in preparation for an examina- 
tion. He is actually following the words on the 
[ 123] 



Making the Most of One's Mind 

page, for the observer can note how his eyes move 
backwards and forwards. Yet if a sheet of paper 
be thrust between his eyes and the book, and he is 
asked some question on the text, it will be found 
that he does not in the least know what he has been 
reading about. His attention has been elsewhere all 
the time. This kind of study is not only useless; 
it is worse than useless, for it actually cultivates 
the lack of power to concentrate our attention at 
will. 

Those who write on such matters quarrel a good 
deal about the naming and nature of the different 
kinds of attention. They talk about voluntary 
attention, involuntary attention, non-voluntary atten- 
tion, spontaneous attention. But for our purposes 
it is enough to have two kinds of attention — one 
that implies effort and one that does not. Many 
things we attend to naturally, easily, and without 
the least effort. This kind of attention may be 
called spontaneous. But there are many things that 
Ave find it necessary to attend to that are not in 
themselves attractive. If they are to get a fair share 
of our attention we must make an effort, we must 
exercise our will. That is why this kind of effortful 
attention is commonly called voluntary. This adjec- 
tive does not mean that we attend willingly: we 
would much more willingly attend to more attrac- 
tive things. It means rather that we attend by 
force of will : we compel ourselves by sheer will- 
power to attend to things that are in themselves 
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A Guide for All Students 

unattractive, because we realize that these unattrac- 
tive things are very important for us. 

It is sometimes said that voluntary attention is a 
higher form than spontaneous, and that therefore 
the student should seek to rise from spontaneous 
attention to the voluntary form. But it might be 
more truly said that the object of education is to 
enable the pupil to pass from the voluntary form 
of attention to the spontaneous. Surely it cannot 
be the aim of either teacher or pupil to do something 
that will make attention more difficult. The better 
educated the student, the more easily ought he to 
be able to direct his attention wherever he chooses. 

The relation between spontaneous and voluntary 
attention will be better understood when we consider 
the meaning and place of what is called interest. 
Certain things appeal to us, draw out our sympathy, 
rouse us to pursue them, all because in some way 
they concern us. Interest literally means being 
mixed up with or connected with something. What- 
ever in any way affects our activities is of interest 
to us. We are not to suppose that to be interesting 
is the same as to be pleasing. We are interested in 
a great many things that are extremely unpleasant. 
There is probably no place in the world more inter- 
esting than the dentist's chair. There you have no 
difficulty in maintaining attention. No effort of will 
is required. Your attention is perfectly spontaneous. 
As a matter of fact things go farther than that. Not 
only do you need no effort of the will to attend, but 
[125] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

you are made to attend practically against your 
will. Very gladly would you attend to something 
else, but the circumstances of this case compel you 
to attend to what the dentist is doing. This kind 
of attention you may call, if you like, involuntary 
attention, or attention against the will. Still, there 
are only the two kinds of attention that are important 
so far as we are concerned. For in spontaneous 
attention there is no exercise of the will at all, 
whereas in voluntary attention the will is always 
making an effort. In what is called involuntary 
attention the will desires to attend to something, 
say a, and is compelled to attend to something else, 
say b. It implies effort, though unsuccessful effort. 
It is therefore of fundamental importance to learn 
what help we can get in our struggles to keep our 
attention fixed in whatever direction we may desire. 

Experiments have been made to determine how 
long we can maintain attention by the sheer exercise 
of the will, that is how long we can attend to some- 
thing that has no interest whatever for us. Suppose 
you concentrate your attention on some totally un- 
interesting thing, say the point of a needle, how 
long do you think you can maintain this voluntary 
attention? Remember you are to attend to nothing 
else but the point of the needle. You are not to 
think, for example, of the use of the needle, or the 
pain that the point would produce if you pricked 
your finger with it, or of the owner of the needle, 
or its maker, or its price, or its material — but merely 
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A Guide for All Students 

of the point of the needle. You will find that even 
by a violent effort you are able to maintain this sort 
of unnatural attention for only a few seconds at a 
time. After that, either your mind wanders around 
the subject, seeking for points of interest, or you 
become dazed and find yourself attending to nothing 
at all. 

If, then, you can use pure voluntary attention for 
only a few seconds at. a time, it is surely impossible 
to carry on your studies by this means. The truth 
is that unless spontaneous attention comes to the aid 
of voluntary attention, steady study is impossible. 
It is certainly true that voluntary attention marks 
a higher level than spontaneous. Unless we are able 
to exercise voluntary attention we can hardly claim 
to be the captains of our own souls, and we are not 
to think that the very limited time during which we 
can maintain pure voluntary attention in any way 
diminishes the importance of this form. Its function 
is to give direction to the activities of the mind. 
The helm is not the most imposing part of a ship, 
and yet it controls all the rest. Voluntary attention 
plays the part of helm. It turns our activities in 
this way and in that, but it depends upon other 
forces to supply the motive power. Interest is the 
driving power that corresponds to the wind in the 
case of a sailing ship, and to steam or electricity in 
the case of the other kinds. The moment interest 
is introduced the attention ceases to be purely volun- 
tary and becomes to some extent at least spontaneous. 
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The more interest the greater the degree of 
spontaneity. 

When you sit down to a disagreeable subject, 
you are unable to get up much interest, and in 
consequence you have to depend largely upon volun- 
tary attention. You work for a minute or two, and 
then find that your attention has wandered. You 
pull yourself together, and compel yourself once 
again to attend.. The less interesting the subject 
the more frequently you must use the whip of volun- 
tary attention. Any little interest that you can get 
up in the subject is of the greatest possible help. 
Unfortunately interest is a treacherous ally: it works 
on both sides. It distracts as well as helps to con- 
centrate. If in working at your textbook in Physics 
you find yourself reading the advertisements at the 
end, or if in dealing with an arithmetical problem 
about the cost of papering a room you find yourself 
wondering about the colour of the paper and the 
sort of man who is going to live in that room, interest 
has played you false. But of the two it is note- 
worthy that the first lapse is much worse than the 
second. There is less connexion between Physics 
and the advertisements than between the colour of 
the paper and the wall space of the room. There is 
less hope for the student who listlessly turns the 
pages of the book than for the one who only allows 
his imagination a little too free scope in playing 
around his problem. 

Fortunately for the student, interest has a tendency 
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A Guide for All Students 

to rise out of the very material studied, whenever 
enough time is allowed for it to develop. It is the 
function of the voluntary attention to secure this 
opportunity for interest to develop. At the begin- 
ning of a period of study in a disagreeable subject 
the appeal to the voluntary attention is rather fre- 
quent. The mind is continually letting itself wander 
and needs repeated calls to order. But as the work 
goes on the periods of spontaneous attention increase 
in length, and by and by there is need for only an 
occasional appeal to the voluntary attention. 

There is a fact in natural history that is often 
used to encourage young people to face disagree- 
able work. At least I hope it is a fact, for I cannot 
say that I have ever verified it on its literal side. 
We are told that if we deal with a nettle gingerly 
we get badly stung, but if we "grip it like a man of 
mettle" we escape all disagreeable consequences. 
However it may be with nettles, it is undoubtedly 
true that firm treatment of disagreeable subjects 
leads quite rapidly to an amelioration in the dis- 
agreeableness. It is probably the swing effect more 
than anything else that eases our way, and it is 
obvious that the fewer relapses into other matters 
the greater the chance of the swing to establish 
itself. The effort at the beginning is great — there 
is no sense in blinking the disagreeable fact — but 
the reward is in proportion. There are few joys 
to surpass the satisfaction we experience when we 
wake up to discover that we have been absorbed 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

for half an hour in a subject that we dislike. Yet 
this absorption is the almost inevitable result of 
the resolute struggle against distraction during the 
first quarter of an hour of a three-quarters of an 
hour period of dealing with an unattractive subject. 
Talking of being absorbed in a subject raises the 
question of the possibility of maintaining attention 
at the same level all the time. Experiments in 
psychological laboratories have shown that attention 
is rhythmic, it has a regular rise and fall. There 
are beats of attention just as there are beats of the 
heart As we have the alternation between inspira- 
tion and expiration in breathing, so we have an 
alternation between concentration and diffusion in 
the process of attention. In fact some psychologists 
maintain that there is a definite connexion between 
the beats of attention and the rhythm of breathing. 
That there is some connexion between breathing and 
attention is plain to all, and is acknowledged by the 
very words we use in describing attention. Do we 
not speak of "breathless attention"? Are we not 
all familiar with the gasp that the crowd gives on the 
finish of a particularly striking display of fireworks? 
The brilliant lights command such concentrated at- 
tention that we all hold our breath till the lights die 
down, and our attention is once more set free. But 
this more or less physical side of attention, though 
interesting to us, cannot be manipulated to our ad- 
vantage. It is little good to say to ourselves, "Now 
I want to attend : so I shall hold my breath." It is 

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A Guide for All Students 

rather the attention that causes the holding of the 
breath than the holding of the breath the attention; 
though perhaps the best way of putting it is to say 
that the two form part of one whole, and cannot be 
dealt with separately. 

There is, however, another form of rhythm of 
attention in which the rhythm is not quite so regular, 
but in which we have greater power of control. 
When we are studying a subject we are apt to think 
that the concentration beats are what really matter, 
and that the diffusion beats are really periods of rest. 
When we watch a painter at work we observe him 
going up to his canvas and putting in some fine 
touches with a delicate brush. This is his concen- 
tration beat, and we are inclined to say to ourselves, 
"Ah, now this is working, this is the real thing!" 
By and by he strolls back a bit from the canvas and 
takes in the general effect. "This," we say, "is the 
diffusion beat, no doubt. He is having a rest. We 
don't grudge him the relaxation. But of course it 
isn't work." But this is where we go wrong. The 
artist may be working just as hard, and may be 
using up quite as much grey matter in the brain 
when he estimates the general effect from a little 
distance as when he is working at close quarters and 
peering into the canvas. When we say that attention 
has two beats, we must not forget that both beats 
are beats of attention. We are not to suppose that 
the concentration beat means the presence of atten- 
tion and the diffusion beat its absence. To be sure, 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

we do have this alternation between attention and 
distraction. When, for example, we are beginning 
a disagreeable subject, we have already seen that 
every now and again we have wandered off to some- 
thing else. This implies a real loss of attention to the 
subject we are studying, and we have to depend 
upon voluntary attention to bring us back to the 
point at which we strayed away from our subject. 
But in a case in which we are attending to the same 
subject throughout a whole lesson period, and have 
no strayings away from the subject in hand, we 
have yet a more or less regular alternation of the 
concentration and diffusion beats. 

The word concentration is perhaps a little mis- 
leading here. We are too apt to think that attention 
always means concentration on a small area. A 
geologist has two main kinds of work: one is done 
in the field, the other in the laboratory. When 
you meet a geologist at work in the field, you are 
very likely to make the mistake of thinking that 
he is out merely for a stroll. He may have his 
hands in his pockets, he may be leaning over a gate 
and apparently doing nothing but taking in the 
beauty of the scenery. He may even be smoking as 
he goes along. If, however, you visit him in his 
laboratory, you may quite likely find him poring 
over a microscope, or at the very least busy with 
little specimens of minerals to which he is giving his 
close attention. This you feel to be work. This is 
what you understand by concentration. But you 
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A Guide for All Students 

have to realize that concentration is a matter of the 
mind, and not of the area over which the mind is 
working. A man's mind may be as concentrated in 
trying to take in the meaning of a whole landscape, 
as in seeking to identify a particular mineral under 
the microscope. Indeed even in connexion with the 
microscope students are sometimes misled into think- 
ing that there is greater attention implied in using 
the high powers than the low. But in using the 
seventy power, the observer may be attending quite 
as intently Jas when using the eleven hundred power. 
No doubt the higher power may imply a greater, 
amount of physical strain on account of the dimin- 
ished quantity of light. But this is a matter of 
physical conditions rather than mental. 

Concentration, then, we are to regard as referring 
to the whole subject we are studying at any time. 
To understand that subject we may have to take 
now a wide, now a narrow view. But so long as 
we do not lose sight of the main object we have 
before us we can claim to be attending all the time. 
Attention may be diffused as to its area but con- 
centrated as to its purpose. With this explanation 
we may be perhaps permitted to use the terms 
concentration beat and diffusion beat, to indicate 
the narrower or wider area to which attention is 
applied. 

In spite of all that has been said, it is probable 
that you have at the back of your mind the feeling 
that after all real attention is the kind that is marked 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

by a screwing up of your forehead and a severe 
limitation of the area within which you restrict your 
thoughts. On your side is the evidence of a French 
savant who maintains that the broad muscle that 
forms the brow is the special muscle set apart to 
give expression to the state of attention. But you 
can pucker your brow over a wide area as well as 
over a narrow one, and you may get some justifica- 
tion for respecting the diffusion beat by considering 
that we must know not only the details of anything 
that we are studying, but we must know that thing 
in its relations to other things. In our thinking we 
pass through three stages, the thing stage, the law 
stage, and the system stage. Children and savages 
are mainly at the thing stage. They examine each 
thing by itself and think of it as something by itself 
apart from all its surroundings. More mature think- 
ing demands to know the relations between individual 
things and their surroundings. We concentrate on 
each thing no doubt, but immediately thereafter we 
let our minds play around it and try to find out how 
the thing stands in relation to other things. It is 
this playing around a subject that forms the diffu- 
sion beat. When Shakespeare is giving an account 
of the various qualities that make up man's excel- 
lence, he includes "looking before and after," and 
Shelley in his turn makes use of the same expression 
to emphasize man's superiority. It is because we 
can look before and after that we are able to under- 
stand our surroundings. We do not live from mere 
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A Guide for All Students 

moment to moment. We let our minds play around 
all that is submitted to them, and in this way get 
to a truer knowledge. The concentration beat gives 
us the details of an individual fact, but when we 
start looking before and after in order to understand 
the true meaning of the fact, we find ourselves in 
the diffusion beat. 

Obviously both beats are essential to intelligent 
study. We must get up thoroughly each detail that 
is of importance, but we must also learn what the 
importance of this detail is, and how it fits in with 
the other details that make up the whole subject of 
study. In learning grammar, for example, it is not 
uncommon for the pupil to get up all about the sub- 
stantive, then all about the adjective, then all about 
the pronoun, and so on, without bringing all this 
knowledge together. Successful teachers never allow 
this to happen. They are continually referring back- 
wards and forwards and showing the relation of all 
the facts that have been learned. This is why revi- 
sion, that you are apt to find so dreary, is so very 
valuable. It is a systematic looking before and after, 
a deliberate organization of the facts that we have 
mastered. 

Certainly there must be no paltering with 
thoroughness. But it is absolutely essential that we 
should realize exactly what we mean by this term. 
There is great danger that by misunderstanding its 
true meaning we may make serious mistakes in the 
conduct of our studies. 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

To begin with, there are occasions when we have 
no doubt at all in the matter. Certain facts have 
to be mastered. That is they have to be so thoroughly 
studied that they become parts of our very being. 
Facts that have to be turned into faculty are of this 
kind. The multiplication table, the declensions of 
nouns and the paradigms of verbs, the exact memo- 
rizing of verses or other verbal formulae that are 
admitted to be worth memorizing — all these exem- 
plify material that has to be thoroughly assimilated. 
In dealing with them we are not specially called upon 
to look before and after. They have to be mastered. 
Thoroughness demands this. 

But some things are not worth getting up in this 
thorough fashion. Certain details in history, for 
example, are very valuable, since they give a clear 
idea of the conditions under which important events 
have happened. But they are not so important as 
those important events themselves. The terms of 
Magna Charta, or of the Constitutions of Clarendon, 
have to be mastered because of their intrinsic im- 
portance. But a great many details have to be 
considered in order to enable us to understand the 
conditions under which these documents were drawn 
up. In studying history, therefore, the student will 
naturally discriminate between what is essential and 
what is merely scaffolding. 

It is dangerous to say anything that even seems 
to depreciate thoroughness. Poor human nature is 
only too willing to take advantage of anything that 
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A Guide for All Students 

gives it the slightest encouragement to adopt the 
easiest course. In what follows you will please 
keep clearly in mind that what you are being warned 
against is not thoroughness, but a pseudo-thorough- 
ness, a thoroughness that is out of place. In an 
admirable but now out-of-date book for the use of 
students (The Student's Manual) the Rev. John 
Todd has the following passage in a chapter entitled 
Study: 

"Passing over a field of study has been compared graphi- 
cally to conquering a country. If you thoroughly conquer 
everything you meet, you will pass on from victory to victory ; 
but if you leave here and there a fort or a garrison not 
subdued, you will soon have an army hanging on your rear, 
and your ground will soon need reconquering. Never pass 
over a single thing, however minute or apparently of little 
consequence, without understanding all that can be known 
about it. He who accustoms himself to pass over a word or 
sentence, or a single point of mathematical inquiry, without 
thoroughly understanding everything that can be known about 
it, will soon be known as an inaccurate scholar." 

The application is that no difficulty should be 
left till it is thoroughly mastered. Instead of press- 
ing on to new matter the student is recommended to 
sit down before a difficulty, as a general would lay 
siege to a fortress. The difficulty must be mastered 
or the fortress taken before any advance is made. 
Even in warfare it is doubtful whether this policy is 
always a wise one. To the lay mind at any rate it 
appears as if the experience of the English generals 
during the great Boer War rather damages the 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

claims of the principle. But in any case in respect 
of study the Rev. John Todd was wrong. 

It is easy to understand what he really meant, 
He was so afraid of students shirking genuinely 
hard work that he laid down his severe rule. It is 
only a variant of the usual warning that there is no 
royal road to learning. Todd is right in not giving 
way to those who hold out hopes of a primrose path. 
Difficulties must be faced : the nettle must be grasped. 
But the question arises : Must it be now ? To the 
man who knows human nature, such a question will 
be recognized as the most dangerous form in which 
the problem could be put. There is nothing so 
insidiously undermining to strength of character as 
this plea of justifiable procrastination. We are all 
so willing to postpone the evil hour that we welcome 
with something like enthusiasm the recommendation 
of any one who ventures to advise delay. But here 
I have no claim to deserve such an enthusiastic 
reception. I have no comforting advice in the way 
of avoiding difficulties. I admit that they must be 
faced, faced promptly, faced dourly. But we must 
not be foolishly dour. "Dogged does it," no doubt, 
'but it does not always do it intelligently. There 
may be other ways. There may be a way round. 
We must not make the mistake of the English 
officers at the beginning of the Boer War, .and sacri- 
fice our energies by an heroic but unprofitable frontal 
attack. Our object is success in our studies, success, 
no doubt, in overcoming any particular difficulty, 
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A Guide for All Students 

but more important still, success in our study as a 
whole. We must husband our resources, and use 
them to the best advantage. If we have faced a 
difficulty squarely, worked our way all round it, 
looked at it from every point of view, and can still 
make nothing of it, we are not well advised to sit 
down before it, and wait for something to turn up. 
Yet if we are to follow the advice of the Rev. John 
Todd, that is all that is left for us to do. 

It has to be admitted that up to a certain point 
he is entirely in the right. We must not pass over 
any element of the problem as unimportant ; we must 
see that we understand all the details, and we must 
realize which are the points that we do not under- 
stand. It is one thing not to understand a detail, it 
is another to know that there is a detail that we do 
not understand. It is not always possible to follow 
the counsel never to pass over a detail "without 
thoroughly understanding everything that can be 
known about it," but it is always a point gained 
when we are able to note that there is something 
that we do not understand. We have made no 
inconsiderable advance when we know that we have 
a difficulty to face. For it is sometimes possible to 
know and understand all the details of a problem 
without realizing that there is a problem at all. 

Granted that we know that we are face to face 

with a serious difficulty, we want to know how to 

face it. I find that the great d'Alembert, the editor 

of the famous French Ency elope die, gave this advice 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

to young mathematical students when they come up 
against the disheartening wall that so often rears 
itself up before them : "Have faith, and go ahead !" 
It is pleasant to find that M. Fabre, the distinguished 
naturalist already quoted in our first chapter, has 
followed his countryman's advice, with a result that 
strengthens our view as against that of the Rev. John 
Todd. Speaking of the serious difficulties in his 
mathematical studies, M. Fabre says: 

"Faith I had, and I went on pluckily. And it was well for 
me that I did, for I often found behind the wall the enlighten- 
ment that I was seeking in front of it. Giving up the bad 
patch as hopeless, I would go on and, after I had left it 
behind, discover the dynamite capable of blasting it. 'Twas 
a tiny grain at first, an insignificant ball, rolling and increas- 
ing as it went. From one slope to another of the theorems 
it grew to a heavy mass ; and the mass became a mighty 
projectile which, flung backwards and retracing its course, 
split the darkness and spread it into one vast sheet of light. 

"D'Alembert's precept is good and very good, provided 
you do not abuse it. Too much precipitation in turning 
over the intractable page might expose you to many a 
disappointment. You must have fought the difficulty tooth 
and nail before abandoning it. This rough skirmishing leads 
to intellectual vigour." 1 

In order to avoid abusing d'Alembert's advice, 
we must ask ourselves the question: "How long 
must I wrestle with an apparently insoluble problem 
before I can give it up with honour?" The answer 
is that we are never entitled to give it up at all, 
unless, as in the case of perpetual motion or the 

1 The Life of the Fly, p. 332. 
[ I40] 



A Guide for All Students 

squaring of the circle, it can be proved that a solu- 
tion of the problem is impossible. I have no com- 
fort to give the lover of ease. There is no good 
saying Peace, when there is no peace. But while we 
must make up our minds never to give up a soluble 
problem, it does not follow that we should spend 
time unprofitably over it. Attack the problem as 
vigorously as you can, but do not suspend all your 
other operations merely to lay siege to it. A time 
comes when it is advantageous to make a note of our 
temporary failure, and move on. What we want 
to learn in each case is when that time for raising 
the siege has arrived. Now in dealing with a prob- 
lem, we may be said to pass through three stages, 
marked by the degree of freedom with which we 
can manipulate the materials at our disposal. 

At the first stage we bring forward a great deal 
of matter with which we are quite familiar. We 
know exactly what each bit of it means : our mind 
moves easily among the elements and we do not 
have to reason about it at all. We are here in the 
region of observation. We note certain things and 
know exactly what the bearings of those things 
are. As you get into the hall on returning home 
you say, "I see Jack's got back." As a matter of 
fact you see nothing of the kind. What you do see 
is a hat and a walking-stick. But they speak so 
plainly that you do not need to think about their 
meaning. You really infer from the hat and stick, 
that Jack must be in the house, but, as the conclu- 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

sion is so easily drawn, the whole process is regarded 
as a matter of observation, and we say that we see 
or observe that Jack is at home. This stage may 
then be called the observation stage. 

The second stage is marked by conscious infer- 
ence, and may therefore be called the inference 
stage. Here we are dealing with things that we 
understand, but do not know intimately. We have 
to consider each fact and draw conclusions from it, 
and in this way make progress. The work may be 
slow, but we know where we are. We may not be 
successful at first, but if one way of dealing with the 
problem fails us, we try something else. We at 
least know what to do next. This inference stage 
is the most usual and interesting one in our studies. 
Sometimes the inference is easy, sometimes it is 
difficult. But we know when we are making prog- 
ress. We know when we encounter a gap in our 
knowledge, and we know how to fill that gap. We 
keep our eyes and ears open, we ask questions, we 
read books, we use all the means in our power to 
reach the end we have in view. For at this stage we 
always do know definitely the precise object of our 
study. 

In some cases, however, the problem becomes so 
difficult that we begin to lose our way altogether. 
It may arrive at that point at which it is beyond 
the reach of the materials at our disposal. When a 
Frenchman comes to this stage he says that he is 
at the end of his Latin. He has done all he can 
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A Guide for All Students 

think of, and does not know what to do next. So 
long as we can go on asking questions and making 
intelligent experiments, we are still at the stage of 
inference, though we may be getting into the upper 
regions of inference where the air is very rare and 
it is difficult to breathe. But when we have no more 
definite questions to ask, and no specific experiments 
to suggest, we have reached what I like to call "the 
gaping point." People often find themselves at the 
gaping point in dealing with a very badly written 
letter they have received. After making all manner 
of inferences based upon the post-mark, and the 
signature, and whatever words they are able to make 
out, there comes a time when there is nothing more 
to be done than gape at the letter, turn it upside 
down, look at it sideways, carry it about in the 
pocket, and occasionally pull it out quickly to see if 
by any chance it is possible to take it by surprise, 
and get at the meaning. It is when we have reached 
the gaping point that the time has come for making 
a move away from the problem. When we have 
reached the stage at which we do not know what to 
do next, we have obviously come to a point at which 
further study of the problem is only a waste of time. 
By and by, no doubt, something will turn up that 
may throw light on the subject and suggest a new 
line of investigation, but in the meantime we are 
merely wasting time by gaping. 

As a young teacher I had a class in technical 
drawing for skilled artisans. My pupils used to 
[143] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

bring me drawings, that had been given them for 
their guidance, and get me to explain them. As a 
rule I found the drawings easy enough to interpret, 
but on one occasion a huge drawing in Perspective 
was handed to me as I left the class in the evening, 
for explanation next day. After supper I laid out 
the drawing on my table, and in twenty minutes I 
understood it all except one little three-quarters of 
a circle at one of the vision points. I could not 
understand what part it played in the whole scheme : 
it appeared absolutely useless. But experience in 
drawings of this kind had taught me that everything 
has a meaning, and I had read the Rev. John Todd. 
Accordingly I settled myself down to the siege of 
this difficulty. Hour after hour passed without 
bringing any enlightenment, and at length in the 
early morning, with an internal apology to the Rev. 
John Todd, I capitulated and started to roll up the 
sheet. To my surprise the tiny three-quarters of a 
circle moved. It turned out to be a hair from my 
moustache. It was then that my suspicions were 
aroused about the siege system of learning. 

Take the case of a passage in a foreign language. 
At first you move easily enough among the nouns 
and verbs and adjectives. You know what most 
of them mean, and you know their ordinary agree- 
ments among themselves. You find, however, that 
there are some words that you do not know. The 
dictionary is at hand and this difficulty disappears. 
There may still be some little trouble about a con- 
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A Guide for All Students 

cord or an inflection, but in general terms you feel 
that you know the run of the passage. By and by, 
however, you observe that there is a combination of 
words that do not make sense. You look at each 
individual word, and find that you know them all. 
The grammatical details seem all in order. Yet 
there remains a persistent lack of meaning : the pas- 
sage has no sense. But you are not yet reduced to 
extremity. You look up in your dictionary all the 
words, however familiar, that appear in the trouble- 
some part, for experience has shown you that com- 
mon words have sometimes a special meaning that 
the dictionary is good enough to disclose. For ex- 
ample, in a French passage, the word Monsieur is 
so commonplace as to rouse no suspicion. It is the 
last word in the passage that you would look for 
trouble about. Yet when every other word has 
established its bona fides and you turn this up in 
hopeless depression, you get the key to the whole 
passage when the dictionary tells you that this word 
was formerly used (with a capital — but you had paid 
no attention to this trifling peculiarity in your search 
after meaning) to denote the eldest of the King's 
brothers. But suppose you have no luck in the 
dictionary, and after all your efforts you remain 
baffled, and do not know what to do next, you have 
reached your gaping point. It is time to move on. 

You have made a note of your defeat. You are 
depressed about it, and probably a little angry. All 
this is to the good. You are in a fighting mood, 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

and determined sooner or later to get the better of 
the recalcitrant passage. Not infrequently you will 
find consolation sooner than you expect. It is not 
uncommon to find on the next page some remark or 
other that makes quite plain what formerly was 
unintelligible. When you are dealing with the indi- 
vidual passage you have of course done a good deal 
of looking before and after, but you have been 
limited by your ignorance of what is to come in 
the text. Your making an advance after you have 
recognized that you have reached your gaping point 
is in fact only an extension of the process of looking 
before and after. You are taking a wider view, and 
sooner or later this wider view will include some- 
thing that throws light upon the difficulty you have 
temporarily abandoned. 

Since you who read this book have taken your 
own education in hand you have become an edu- 
cator, and therefore ought to be interested in the 
methods of teaching that are presented to teachers 
at their colleges. Unfortunately most of these 
methods demand two persons that are separate from 
one another. They are not usually such as can be 
applied by a person like yourself combining the two 
characters of educator and educand. But there are 
two special methods that have something to teach 
you, even though you cannot apply them to 
perfection. 

The first of these is named the Socratic Method, 
after a Greek philosopher who flourished in Athens 
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A Guide for All Students 

at the end of the fifth century b. c. You remember 
that I pointed out already that it is often the teacher's 
business to make his pupils take trouble. Socrates 
realized this with special clearness, and spent most 
of his time trying to get his fellow citizens in Athens 
to think for themselves. His plan was to get into 
conversation with some of them, and ask them the 
meaning of words that they used glibly enough but 
did not fully understand. His view was that as 
soon as we clearly understand the terms we use, we 
are on the direct way to right thinking. Accord- 
ingly he made them see by his conversation that 
they did not know exactly the meaning of the terms 
they were using, and then set them about finding 
out the true meaning. He would ask his friends 
what justice was, or temperance, or truth. They 
would answer easily enough at first, but he would 
go on to raise difficulties and could easily show that 
their meanings were not quite accurate. They would 
change one meaning for another, and with that too 
he had some fault to find, and by and by, after many 
trials, they would discover that they really did not 
know what the meaning of the word was. When 
they had reached this stage he would go on asking 
more and more questions, till at last he led them to 
find out for themselves the true meaning of the 
word. 

You will thus see that in the Socratic method 
there are three stages in the experience of the pupil. 
He begins by being quite confident, though he has 

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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

no cause to be confident. By and by he becomes 
confused, and reaches a state of doubt. After that 
he comes to the third stage, which again is one of 
confidence, but this time it is a confidence that has 
a good foundation. A peculiarity that marked the 
teaching of Socrates was that he always professed 
that he never really taught anybody anything. All 
that he did was to enable people to find out things 
for themselves. Obviously to carry out this method 
properly it is essential to have a teacher who stands 
outside of us altogether, and by his questions gets us 
to think in a particular way. The teacher is sup- 
posed to know beforehand all that the pupil 'is after- 
wards to learn. For Socrates' affectation of igno- 
rance was only a pose. He knew quite well whither 
his teaching was tending, but for dramatic effect he 
proclaimed that he himself did not know, he just 
asked for information. This is what is called the 
Socratic irony. It was used because he had to 
deal with the very intelligent and rather conceited 
Athenians, and much of his teaching had no higher 
aim than to make these Athenians realize the possi- 
bility that they might be wrong. Now to some 
extent it is possible for us to use the Socratic method 
with ourselves. On a famous occasion Cromwell 
made the appeal to certain persons: 

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible 
you may be mistaken." 

Is it too much to hope that the readers of this 
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A Guide for All Students 

book have no need to have such a prayer addressed 
to them ? Assuming then that we do not need to be 
convinced of our fallibility, we may be able to use 
the method of asking ourselves questions with the 
honest purpose of finding out how matters stand 
in relation to what we are studying. This plan of 
putting questions to ourselves is only a way of -ex- 
pressing what is always going on in our minds when 
we are dealing with a problem. Young pupils when 
set to write a short essay are often quite at a loss 
what to say. Teachers of junior forms in school 
sometimes hit upon the plan of telling their pupils 
to put internal questions to themselves, and then 
write out the answers. The answers when written 
down do make up some sort of essay. The arrange- 
ment is usually rather bad. But so soon as the 
youngsters have written down a sheet of answers, 
they find that they have some material to go upon. 
They acquire confidence, and by rearranging what 
they have written down and adding what occurs to 
them in the process, they are generally able to pro- 
duce passable work. 

You have seen that Socrates did his best to mini- 
mize his work as a teacher. But there is another 
method of teaching that urges the teacher to do still 
less for the pupil than Socrates did. After all he 
set the problem, and kept up a running fire of 
questions. The method known as Heuristic recom- 
mends the teacher to leave everything to the pupils 
after the problem has been clearly stated. The word 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

heuristic means literally finding out, and the method 
has been described as the method of causing children 
to find out things for themselves. In schools this 
method is applied mainly in science teaching, but it 
need not be confined to science subjects. What 
makes it specially interesting to readers of this book 
is that it throws the whole responsibility of investi- 
gation upon the pupil. The method is not a new one, 
and has been associated with very distinguished 
names, among them Rousseau and Burke. But in 
recent years it has been brilliantly advocated by 
Professor Henry E. Armstrong. 1 He tells me that 
on one occasion his daughter, then a little girl, had 
been reading Professor Drummond's book called 
The Monkey That Would not Kill. Among the 
wonderful escapes of this monkey was one from 
drowning. He had been cast into the sea with a 
stone tied round his neck, and thought it was all 
over with him ; but to his surprise he found that the 
stone was not nearly so heavy in the sea as it was 
on land, so he was able to get ashore. The little 
girl asked her father if it was true that a stone was 
not so heavy in the water as it is outside the water. 
This is a question that Professor Armstrong regards 
it as "criminal" to answer, since to do so wastes an 
excellent opportunity of applying the heuristic 
method. So his reply was, "Suppose we try to find 
out." Thereupon began a series of experiments, 
made by the little girl and recorded by her in an 
1 The Teaching of Scientific Method, Chap. xv. 
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A Guide for All Students 

exercise book that I am in hopes to see published 
one day. 

Here we have a very definite case in which we 
know exactly what the problem is. We may not 
be able to answer the question we have set ourselves, 
but at any rate we are in no doubt about what the 
question means. There is nothing more hopeless 
or more futile than to put in a period of study 
without knowing exactly what we are aiming at. 
In such a case we do not reach the gaping point, 
after a series of efforts to solve a problem. We 
start at the gaping point. Some teachers are very 
punctilious in stating at the beginning of every lesson 
what the exact aim of the lesson is. Obviously this 
is not always essential. Not much good is done by 
announcing at the beginning of a lesson on the Latin 
verb volo, "The purpose of this lesson is to master 
all the irritating peculiarities of the irregular verb 
volo." It is clear that the heuristic method is applic- 
able only to constructive study. There is nothing 
to find out in a purely assimilative lesson. But in 
constructive study it is hardly possible to overesti- 
mate the importance of setting before yourself the 
definite end or purpose you have in view. 

Very frequently time is wasted by the student in 
merely fumbling with a problem. Unless we have a 
clearly imaged end, there is great danger of merely 
fiddling about with the elements of a problem. Some 
students feel that when they are studying they must 
be doing something. In one particular school with 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

which I was acquainted, it was counted an offence 
"not to have something on your paper." The effect 
of this was that even if a pupil had no idea how to 
work a particular problem, he had to write down 
something — a most pernicious habit. Writing non- 
sense is necessarily bad for any one. No doubt it is 
very unpleasant to sit at your desk and gnaw the end 
of your pen, but you do not improve matters by 
scribbling down meaningless words. This criticism 
naturally does not apply so long as you have the 
least idea of getting at a result by a series of trials. 
Your attempts may be far from hopeful, but so 
long as they have a definite object they are justifi- 
able. So soon, however, as you have no definite 
purpose in what you do, you can no longer be said 
to study in any real sense. 



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CHAPTER VI 



READING 

WE have seen that reading is one of the three 
main ways of acquiring knowledge. But 
when we take up a book, it is not always for the 
sake of learning something. Often we read for 
amusement ; but even in such reading we cannot fail 
to pick up much knowledge by the way. Reading 
a novel is really equivalent to experiencing at second 
hand. The man who writes such a book must him- 
self know a great many things about the circum- 
stances of the characters he introduces, and as you 
read his descriptions you cannot but acquire knowl- 
edge. The information gathered from a novel may 
be inaccurate, but this does not alter the fact that 
we cannot read a novel without some effect upon our 
stock of knowledge. Nor does the influence of 
novels stop at mere knowledge. In higher matters, 
too, we learn from them. The lessons may be for 
good or for evil, but lessons there are. We have 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

to admit that there is point in Dr. Walter C. Smith's 
protest about — 

"Those new-fangled consciences of. ours, 
Formed not by nature but by novels." 

The fact of the matter is that reading cannot help 
influencing our lives, since in the wider sense inter- 
course must include reading; after all, reading is a 
form of intercourse. Indeed the great advantage 
of literature is that it enables us to keep company 
with the greatest minds of all time. It is true it 
has to be admitted that it is a rather lopsided inter- 
course. We are all made to feel the unresponsiveness 
of the mere book. In our endeavours to educate 
ourselves we ought to recognize the necessity of 
actual human intercourse. This idea is introduced 
here because it is mainly in connexion with reading 
that the great distinction is usually drawn between 
the private student and the student who obtains his 
education in a school or college. The University 
of London, for example, has two kinds of students. 
The internal students are those who belong to some 
of the institutions connected with the University, 
who receive instruction there under teachers recog- 
nized by the University, and who are not admitted 
to examination for degrees till they have made -the 
necessary attendances, and are certified by their 
teachers as having done satisfactory work. The 
external students, on the other hand, can study 
where they please; they may have teachers, or they 
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A Guide for All Students 

may do the whole of their work privately; all that 
the University demands is that they shall pass the 
prescribed examinations and thus show that they 
have obtained the minimum amount of knowledge 
necessary to win the degree. External students, 
whatever their disadvantages, must reach exactly 
the same standard as the internals, so that from 
one point of view the winner of an external de- 
gree deserves more credit than the winner of an 
internal. 

On the other hand, it is objected that the external 
student loses something because he does not mix with 
other students. He may have a private tutor, and 
thus share the advantages of teaching enjoyed by 
his internal rivals, but it is maintained that he is at a 
disadvantage, because he has not had the benefit of 
intercourse in the college class-rooms, common- 
rooms, quadrangles, and playing fields. It is no 
doubt highly desirable that a student should mix 
with his fellows. What he learns from his books 
is one thing, what he learns from his teachers is 
another; but his fellow students have still a third 
kind of training to give him, and wherever possible 
he should avail himself of the training that only 
his fellows can provide. 

The external student who has no teacher is apt 
to over-emphasize the value of reading: he is apt to 
become bookish. But there are other things to be 
acquired than the knowledge to be found in books. 
People get a certain ease and polish from mingling 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

with one another, and besides this they acquire the 
power of applying what knowledge they possess. 
Many men who are full of knowledge are very 
awkward in their everyday life, and are unable to 
use their knowledge to the best advantage. It is 
generally found that people who get their knowledge 
entirely from books, and mix little with their fel- 
lows, are at a disadvantage in life. They are called 
bookworms, and are generally regarded as unprac- 
tical persons. They are not at home with other 
people. They are uncomfortable in society and make 
other people uncomfortable. The remedy of course 
is not to give up reading, but to combine reading 
with that amount of intercourse that enables them to 
use with effect what they have acquired from books. 

Perhaps it is not unnecessary to add that all this 
warning against being too bookish is rather danger- 
ous reading for many internal students. As a rule 
these find it easy to resist the temptation to read too 
much. What they need in most cases is an exhorta- 
tion to read more. The matter is put before you 
squarely : it is for you to determine in which direc- 
tion your danger lies. 

In any case you must read a great deal. It is 
accordingly of the highest importance that you 
should learn all that there is to be known about it. 
At the very start we have to consider what may be 
called the mechanism of reading. It consists essen- 
tially in the translation of visual signs into mental 
states. One person thinks, and to represent his 
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A Guide for All Students 

thought causes certain marks to be put on paper or 
elsewhere. Another person sees these marks and 
repeats in his mind the processes that went on when 
the other thought. The first thing to be noticed in 
this passage from printed characters to thought 
processes is the time element. We do not sufficiently 
realize the great differences in the speed with which 
different people read. Experiments have been made, 
and it is found that when great numbers of people 
are tested, they differ so widely that the fastest 
readers can read six times quicker than the slowest. 
Naturally we want to know the cause of this 
enormous difference. No doubt the natural endow- 
ment of the individual has a good deal to do with 
the different rates of speed. Some are naturally 
quicker than others in all their mental and physical 
reactions. But we are not to suppose that it is 
merely a matter of Quick Wits and Hard Wits 
again. A quick-witted boy in Ascham's sense of 
the term may not be a particularly quick reader. 
His strong point is quickness of apprehension. As 
soon as a point is put before him he understands its 
bearing. He will learn quicker from a book than 
would a slower-witted boy, but he does not neces- 
sarily read faster. 

Many teachers are inclined to say that the slow- 
ness of reading that sometimes marks quite quick- 
witted people results from the bad way in which 
reading is taught in schools. At school what is 
technically known as a reading lesson is always a 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

lesson in reading aloud. No doubt at the early 
stages of learning to read it is necessary to have 
a certain amount of audible reading in order that 
the teacher may know that the pupil is really follow- 
ing word by word the passage that is being read. 
But it does not follow that this method should be 
kept up all the way through school. For instance, 
when the tests were made to discover the speed of 
reading they did not take the form of reading aloud. 
The investigator's object was not to discover which 
of the persons tested could gabble off most quickly 
a given passage. The test was how long each person 
took to master the contents of a certain number of 
pages. The person had not to pronounce each word 
or even to isolate each word in his mind. What 
he had to do was to elicit the complete sense of the 
passage. 

Many people, even when they are reading silently, 
pronounce "to themselves" each of the words as it 
occurs. Some go further and make a half audible 
sound. Those who sit beside such readers are 
annoyed by a sort or irregular hissing sound that is 
kept up all the time. Even in the case of those 
who make no audible sound it is often possible to 
detect by the movements of the lips those who pro- 
nounce inwardly the words as they read. All such 
lip movements are an interference with the speed 
of reading. You should accordingly get some friend 
to observe you when you are off your guard, and tell 
you whether you use lip movements as you read. 
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A Guide for All Students 

If you find that you do make such movements, it 
will be worth your while to practise reading without 
them. 

Some authorities are beginning to recommend 
that reading should be taught merely with a view 
to making out the sense, and with no attempt at 
pronouncing the words. Others point out that the 
main function of reading is to bring out the expres- 
sion the author put into the words. J. G. Herder, 
for example, recommended that Homer should be 
read as if he were singing in the streets. Obviously 
we have here a quarrel that arises because the dis- 
putants are speaking of different things. One set 
wants the pupils to acquire speed in rapidly getting 
the meaning of a passage, the other set wants the 
pupil to acquire the power of bringing out the full 
content of the passage for the benefit of both himself 
and others. What we are primarily concerned with 
at present is the first purpose, the power to dig out 
of a passage in the shortest possible time all the 
information it has to give us. By reading in this 
sense we mean reading so as to acquire knowledge. 
Enjoyment and expression will have their turn 
afterwards. 

Schools are beginning to recognize the need for 
training in this practical kind of reading. Pupils 
must still read aloud, as this gives a certain training 
of the vocal organs, and besides is preparatory to 
the artistic use of reading; but they are also getting 
practice in "silent reading." A passage is pre- 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

scribed, and a certain time allowed. At the end 
of this time the pupil has to state how far he has 
read, and then stand an examination on the subject- 
matter. It is claimed that this method should help 
in reducing the tendency to lip movements. Those 
who take this view say that pupils rapidly acquire 
the power of gathering in the meaning entirely by 
the eye, and get rid of the handicap of muscular 
movements or attempts to move. Suppose you find 
that in reading you are given to lip movements and 
set about suppressing them, you will probably find 
that you experience certain tensions in your throat 
that you can associate with the suppressed attempt 
to pronounce internally the words that you are read- 
ing. It is obviously greatly to your advantage to 
get rid of these abortive muscular movements. They 
waste time and direct energy into wrong channels. 
The best way to get rid of these tensions is to 
increase the speed of your reading. As this speed 
increases, you will probably find that you have a 
tendency to drop the word as the unit of language, 
and to adopt the phrase as that unit. That is, the 
mind begins to take in the meaning of the whole 
passage without pausing on the individual words at 
all. Very quick readers, indeed, seem to take in 
the sense not even by phrases but by sentences. 
In truth, there are those who claim to gulp down 
meaning by paragraphs. 

Your first business will be to find out your present 
rate of reading, that is your maximum rate of read- 
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A Guide for All Students 

ing as a purely mechanical process of absorbing 
meaning. The question is, how many words you can 
read per minute and understand the meaning of the 
passage you are dealing with. Take some ordinary 
book of no great difficulty. Let it be on history, 
biography, travels — anything you like, so long as it 
is not so technical as to demand study rather than 
reading. Now count the number of words on each 
of five ordinary full pages. You will find that the 
number of words is approximately the same on each 
page, but to make quite sure add your numbers 
together and divide by five. This will give you the 
average number of words per page. Then open the 
book at random and read as strenuously as you can 
for, say, ten minutes. If possible, get some friend 
to watch the time for you, so that you may give 
your whole attention to the reading without being 
distracted by keeping your eye on the clock. You 
will, of course, read silently, and you will remember 
that your purpose is to get the sense of the passage. 
You are reading for information, not for style or for 
anything else. When the time is up you will count 
the number of complete pages that you have read 
and multiply this number by the average number 
of words per page. Next, to this total you will add 
the number of words you have read on the unfinished 
page: for it is very unlikely that you will chance 
to be just at the end of a page when the time is up. 
Having thus obtained the exact number of words 
you have read in ten minutes, all you have to do is 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

to divide this number by ten, and you get your rate 
per minute. 

It is impossible for me to guess at all accurately 
what your rate may be, since people differ so very 
much. It is interesting to know that solemn public 
speakers utter on an average one hundred words per 
minute; ordinary speakers one hundred and twenty; 
quick speakers one hundred and fifty; and very 
quick speakers sometimes rise to two hundred and 
even go a trifle beyond that rate. But silent reading 
should be very much quicker than reading aloud. 
You should be disappointed if you do not reach three 
hundred words per minute. Mr. Arnold Bennett, 
in his little book called The Truth about an Author, 
estimates the rate of an average reviewer's reading 
as eight words per second, which, of course, gives 
480 per minute. The quickest readers that I know 
can read an ordinary novel in about two hours. 
Taking this to mean about 100,000 words, we have a 
rate of reading of about 830 words per minute. It is 
true that there are readers who claim a still higher 
rate, and there is a professor in Ireland who states 
that his rate is seventy words per second, which 
gives 4,200 per minute, or more than five times the 
rate of the quickest reader I know. This professor 
could toss off ordinary 100,000 word novels at the 
rate of one every twenty-four minutes, and in fact 
he tells us that in holiday time half a dozen novels 
a day is his usual allowance. 

You are not to be discouraged by these appalling 
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A Guide for All Students 

figures. You may not be able to reach the eight 
hundred rate, but, on the other hand, you must not 
rest content with the figure you have at present 
reached as shown by your recent test. Whatever 
that figure is, it can be considerably increased by a 
little intelligent practice — unless, indeed, you are in 
the very exceptional position of having had practice 
of this kind already. Most people do not pay any 
attention to their rate of reading, and we all read 
in such an easy-going way that a little speeding up 
is always possible. Further, you are not to suppose 
that any increase in speed necessarily implies a fall- 
ing off in quality. As a matter of fact, the opposite 
is nearer the truth. Increase in speed almost neces- 
sarily increases the value of the reading. You are 
aware that in the addition of long columns the 
quicker we tot them up the more likely are we to be 
accurate. So the additional concentration necessary 
to increase our speed produces its result in increased 
efficiency in the mastering of the subjects about 
which we read. In the experiments made on the 
speed of reading it was found that the quickest 
readers were, on the whole, best able to stand an 
examination on the subject-matter they had read. 

You are not forgetting that all this applies to 
reading in order to acquire information. There are 
other kinds of reading in which speed is not only 
of no consequence as an advantage, but is a positive 
disadvantage. We may want to savour what we 
read : to enjoy it as we go along. The style of the 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

book may in itself be excellent and add to our 
pleasure. Not merely the thing said but the way 
in which it is said may attract us. No doubt mere 
style apart from matter is nothing . more than a 
tinkling cymbal, and may be safely neglected. But 
admirable form joined to worthy matter makes a 
combination that deserves more than a hurried read- 
ing, however thorough that reading may be. 

Further, there is a kind of reading that demands 
not speed but leisure. Its purpose is not to supply 
material to the reader, but rather to direct him in 
using material he has at his disposal. It calls upon 
him to work up his mental content in order to pro- 
duce certain definite effects. Take a descriptive 
poem, for example. Here the poet certainly does 
his best to make pictures rise in the mind of the 
reader, but he does not supply the material. He 
rather depends upon the reader having at his dis- 
posal a number of ideas that may be manipulated by 
the words that the poet uses. When you read a 
fine description in Tennyson or in Scott you are not 
being informed so much as being stimulated. Your 
mind has to elaborate the suggestions supplied by the 
poet. This is why in reading of this kind you often 
half close the book, and, keeping your finger between 
the leaves, let your mind wander over the ideas 
called up by the poet and combine them in the way 
he desires. 

A consideration of this kind of reading brings out 
clearly the necessity for work on the part of the 
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A Guide for All Students 

reader. It is a cooperative process in which the 
reader must do his share. In reading a purely in- 
formative book, the reader must put out a certain 
amount of effort, but it is sometimes imagined that 
in reading a pleasant book of poetry the reader is 
entitled to take things easy. No doubt the kind of 
work he must do in reading such a book is different 
from that he must do in dealing with a text-book. 
But there must be work of some kind. In order that 
a book of poetry may attain its end, there must be 
two workers : the poet and the reader. There are, in 
fact, two kinds of poets, those who write poetry 
and those who enjoy it when written. We are 
tempted to call those who write, active poets, and 
those who read, passive; and there is a certain justi- 
fication in using these terms. But there is danger 
of misunderstanding, since the terms would seem to 
imply that the reader is absolutely passive, instead 
of being merely passive as compared with the writer. 
Unless the reader actively responds, the work of the 
writer is in vain. The poet knows that his reader 
has in his mind somewhere ideas of heather, and 
green and purple and gold, and shimmering seas, 
and twinkling stars, and golden sunshine and silvery 
moonbeams — and out of this store he calls up just 
the elements he needs to produce the effect he hap- 
pens to want at any particular time. If the reader 
lacks any special kind of experience, the poet makes 
a failure with that reader every time the verses call 
for that sort of experience. This is why certain 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

poets are unintelligible to young people, why Brown- 
ing, for example, has so few readers as compared 
with Tennyson. 

We read for information, and we read for pleas- 
ure. But while we are acquiring knowledge and 
experiencing pleasure we are making certain gains 
in passing. Since reading is a means of intercourse, 
by practising it we acquire a command of the chief 
instrument of intercourse — zvords. Every now and 
again it becomes fashionable to disparage words, to 
point out that they are mere breath, empty wind. We 
are told that men are apt to mistake words for 
things and to rest content with saying without doing. 
The philosopher Hobbes is generally quoted : "Words 
are the counters of wise men, but the money of 
fools." Now all this is perfectly true, but it only 
serves as a warning against becoming the slaves of 
words. The common term of contempt is "mere" 
words, and here the adjective indicates the essential 
distinction. So long as words are used without 
reference to the things they ought to signify, obvi- 
ously they are impostors and cannot help misleading 
us. But, on the other hand, without words how 
would our boasted intelligence fare? We may not 
go so far as Shelley when he says, speaking of the 
Deity, 

"He gave man speech, and speech created thought," 

but we cannot deny that without speech it would 

be impossible to carry on intercourse on its present 

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A Guide for All Students 

high plane. Learned books have been written dis- 
cussing whether it is ever possible to think without 
words. The dispute has not yet been definitely 
settled, but it is now generally admitted that nothing 
like continuous thought can be maintained without 
words or their equivalents. 

It is worth your while, then, to take stock of the 
words at your disposal. Leaving out of account 
all other languages, it may be interesting to inquire 
how many words there are in English. In Professor 
W. W. Skeat's Etymological Dictionary of the Eng- 
lish Language (1910), we find that there is a total 
of 14,286 words. Yet when we turn to some of 
those huge dictionaries referred to in our next chap- 
ter we find that they reach, and even exceed, a total 
of 300,000. Obviously many of the words included 
in these immense compendia are not really English 
words. Besides, we may count a word as only one, 
or we may count it as a great many. In Skeat the 
word do counts for only one of the 14,286: in 
other dictionaries it may be expanded so as to in- 
clude all its changes. Thus we may regard as sepa- 
rate words does, doth, did, done, doing, did'st, and 
even don't and didn't. It is thus not difficult to 
see how dictionaries differ in the number of words 
they recognize. Naturally you want to discover how 
many words you know, but it is difficult to find out. 
An ordinary educated Englishman knows practi- 
cally all the words that are really English, and may 
fairly claim to know almost all the words that appear 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

in Skeat, and a good many more when we take into 
account technical terms, anglicized foreign words, 
and slang. It does not seem unreasonable to credit 
him with a knowledge of well over twenty thousand 
words. But if we turn to distinguished writers and 
find out how many words they use, we get a sur- 
prise. Shakespeare is famous for the richness of his 
vocabulary, and yet we find that those who have 
made a careful calculation of his words give him 
only 15,000. Some, it is true, for reasons similar 
to those we have suggested in the case of dictionaries, 
give him 17,000. But even at this higher estimate 
we have the fact that our most distinguished author 
is credited with a smaller vocabulary than is claimed 
for the ordinary educated Englishman. Milton, in- 
deed, has a still lower record: his poems do not 
include more than 8,000 words. Even the English 
Bible is content with 6,000. 

The question naturally arises : if an educated per- 
son knows practically all the words in an ordinary 
English dictionary, how does it come about that 
the number of words in Shakespeare and others is 
so small? The answer is that we are all inclined 
to confound two different kinds of vocabularies — 
the vocabulary of words that we know, and the 
vocabulary of words that we use. .We all know a 
much greater number of words than we use. It 
is sometimes said that the number of words even 
an educated person habitually uses amounts to only 
about 4,000. A Scottish schoolmaster has taken the 
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A Guide for All Students 

trouble to count up the number of words such a 
person would find it necessary to know in order to 
express his ideas, and finds that the minimum is 
17,000 words. But this calculation in no way affects 
the estimate of the number of words habitually used 
by the educated person. An illiterate peasant is 
sometimes said to get along with a vocabulary of 
between 300 and 400 words, though it would be 
easy to demonstrate that he knows a great many more 
words than he actually uses. The number of words 
at the command of a person gives a fair index of 
his literary status. Among the Chinese, for example, 
it was required from anyone who aspired to the 
rank of "imperial historian" that he should be master 
of at least 9,000 words, and in the Chinese examina- 
tions a first or second class depends upon the number 
of words at the command of the candidate. 

We have accordingly to distinguish between the 
living word and the word as found in the dictionary. 
Schoolmasters long ago used to prepare lists of 
words for their pupils to learn, but this was a mis- 
take. We should not go to a dictionary to dig out 
words so as to use them, but should learn words by 
meeting them in ordinary speech and in books. We 
shall speak of the use of dictionaries in our next 
chapter. In the meantime, we have to note that we 
all use words in three different connexions, so that 
we may be said to have each three different vocabu- 
laries. We have a speaking vocabulary, a reading 
vocabulary and a writing vocabulary. In the case 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

of an educated person, the reading vocabulary is 
much fuller than the speaking vocabulary, and 
usually a good deal fuller than the writing vocabu- 
lary. We know and understand words in our read- 
ing that we would never think of using in our 
ordinary speech, and when it comes to writing we 
find that we have all a tendency to limit ourselves to 
the use of certain words, though there are many 
others that we might use if we set ourselves de- 
liberately to employ all the words we know. If you 
could have a complete vocabulary prepared of all 
the words used by, say, Dr. Johnson, and another of 
the words used by Lord Macaulay, you would find 
that the two vocabularies differ materially; and even 
if you take two writers who are contemporaries, 
you will still find a difference, though not quite so 
marked. Your own vocabulary, you may rest 
assured, is different from anybody else's vocabulary, 
though it will be quite like those of your friends or 
fellow students who are living the same life and 
doing the same kind of studies as you. In order that 
people should understand each other readily, it is 
essential that their vocabularies should coincide to 
a great extent, and in particular that their reading 
vocabularies should be the same. It is not so im- 
portant that we should all use the same words, as it 
is that we should all understand the same words. 

The best means of enriching your vocabulary is 
reading. Writing helps, no doubt, particularly in 
the way of making your knowledge of words more 
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A Guide for All Students 

exact. But our first acquaintance with a word should 
be made by meeting it in active service, not on the 
retired list as found in the dictionary. In reading 
your text-books you will often find that what you 
are really doing is mastering a technical vocabulary. 
When you are studying the particular terms used in 
any subject you are, of course, enlarging your 
vocabulary and doing it deliberately. We acquire 
clearness of thought in any subject by analysing out 
the exact meaning of each term. We are, in fact, 
studying the subject-matter by means of the words 
that represent it. 

But there is need for a much wider range in the 
use of words, and this may be acquired in the course 
of what is called general reading. We may read 
an author solely for his style, in which case we are 
studying his work in quite as technical a way as if 
we were reading a text-book. But then, again, we 
may read an author merely to enjoy his work as 
art. We read for the sake of the effect he produces 
on our minds. We may or we may not acquire 
definite information from this reading, but we do 
undoubtedly acquire a vocabulary and a certain 
familiarity with the use of words. 

It should not be supposed that our vocabulary is 
to be recruited entirely from prose reading. In fact, 
there is nothing more valuable as an aid in forming 
our prose vocabulary than the intelligent reading 
of poetry. You will find Shakespeare extremely 
useful in this matter. It is striking to find that not 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

more than between 500 and 600 of his words are 
now obsolete. Tennyson is another artist in words, 
whose works well repay careful study by those who 
wish to enrich their vocabulary. You are not to 
suppose that such reading will encourage you to use 
poetical words in plain prose. The value of reading 
such writers lies in the sense you acquire of the value 
of words, their possibilities, the need for variety, 
and above all, the fact that under certain conditions 
there is only one word that will meet our needs. 

When we look at reading from this point of view 
we have to consider the problem of what is sometimes 
called "desultory reading." By this term is usually 
meant reading that is by the way, that has no definite 
bearing upon our studies, that is, in fact, unsystem- 
atic. Many people roundly condemn this form of 
reading, and maintain that all our reading should 
be definitely mapped out and arranged according to 
a settled plan. To this view no serious objection 
need be raised, but a settled plan ought to make 
provision for a certain amount of reading of a very 
general kind. There is room in life for a limited 
amount of purely random reading, and such reading 
is all the more necessary in the case of those who are 
following a severely systematic course of study. 
What is sometimes called "browsing" among books 
is a valuable part of a general education, though 
obviously it must be kept within narrow limits. To 
be allowed to follow one's own inclination among 
the books in a well-chosen general library is a means 
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A Guide for All Students 

of developing one's individuality. We are not here 
thinking about the possibility of a student reading 
objectionable books : that raises quite a different 
question. What we are concerned with is the need 
for a certain amount of elasticity in the choice of 
reading material. 

Another point that is worth your attention is the 
tone to be acquired by reading of a certain class. 
If you desire to write in a particular way, you will 
find it very helpful to read books exemplifying that 
way. If you wish to write with an elevated tone 
you should saturate your mind with the Bible or 
with such writers as Burke. If you wish to cultivate 
an easy, light tone, such writers as Goldsmith or 
Addison will give you what you want. You will 
often find, indeed, that it is wise to read a writer 
whom you do not greatly admire, in order to get rid 
of certain peculiarities of your own style. 

Having now considered the different kinds of 
reading, we are in a position to look into some of 
those practical problems that face the student. Fore- 
most among these is the question of skipping. You 
are not to make the mistake of treating this as a 
purely moral matter. There are cases where skip- 
ping is contemptible ; there are others in which to do 
anything else is foolish. The important thing is not 
the number of pages you cover, but what you get 
out of them. Your reading must be dominated by 
purpose. You go to a book for a definite purpose; 
unless you make the book serve that purpose you 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

have not used it wisely. Not to skip may be a 
very immoral proceeding. You go to a book to find 
examples of certain grammatical constructions : it 
is altogether wrong to read doggedly through it. 
You wish to form an idea of a man's character from 
his biography. A great deal of the matter in the 
book we take up may be of no value to us whatever 
and ought to be ruthlessly skipped, if we hope to 
look our conscience in the face. The mere desire 
to complete a book is not necessarily a moral desire. 
The spirit of the collector, the lust for completeness, 
rather than a good going conscience accounts for 
the unwillingness of many people to skip. There 
is no breach of contract with a book if we drop it 
when we find that, on closer inspection, it falls short 
of what we expected. 

Where it is wrong to skip is in the book that we 
find difficult, and therefore unattractive. It is the 
old question of thoroughness over again. If the 
difficult or dull part is essential to our purpose, 
skipping is out of the question. If I am trying to 
form a just estimate of a man's character from an 
autobiography, I may feel intensely bored with 
certain chapters, and may honestly, and even justly, 
regard them as in themselves worthless trash, but 
for my present purpose it is imperative that I get 
all the materials for forming a true judgment of the 
man's character. With regard to difficulty it is 
worth noting that we are not justified in skipping a 
chapter on the plea that we do not understand it, 
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A Guide for All Students 

for, obviously, we cannot be sure that we do not 
understand it until we have finished it. Whether 
we should read it a second time or not depends upon 
our attitude towards the whole book. It may be 
quite a desirable thing to neglect the difficult chapter 
till we have read all the rest of the book twice. 

Often all that we want from a book is its essential 
message for us. It is often quite easy to get the 
heart out of a book without reading more than a 
quarter of it. Many German books, for example, 
seem to be written on the principle of telling in the 
first three-quarters of the book all that other people 
have said on the subject, leaving the remaining 
quarter for the author's own contribution. In cases 
of this kind it is folly for an experienced reader to 
trouble with the preliminary part; though, to be 
sure, if the reader is a beginner in the subject the 
whole book must be read. Everything depends on 
the needs of the individual reader. 

The matter of marking books as you read them 
calls for attention. Obviously this can interest us 
only in connexion with books that belong to us. It 
is quite a wise plan to mark text-books. Marks at 
the side, underlinings, numbering of separate points 
in paragraphs, backward and forward references — 
all are valuable in a book of this kind, and increase 
the value of the book for the person who has made 
the marks. 

With regard to ordinary books in literature, 
history, art, criticism, it is probable that we should 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

be very moderate in our use of marks. Some writers 
recommend a more or less technical series of marks 
to indicate various criticisms of the text. A couple 
of lines at the margin, for example: "Signifies that 
this paragraph contains the main or one of the main 
propositions to be proved or illustrated in this 
chapter: the staple or one of the staples on which 
the chain hangs." Another sign conveys the mean- 
ing : "This sentiment is true and will bear expanding, 
and will open a field indefinite in extent"; while 
another serves to inform us that : "This, if carried 
out, would not stand the test of experience, and is 
therefore, incorrect." Other signs indicate good 
taste and bad taste, irrelevancy and repetition, ac- 
curacy and error, good arrangement and bad. 

All this might be useful if your purpose were to 
give a very thorough review of the book for the 
benefit of somebody else — though my experience of 
reviewers does not lead me to gather that they have 
such a starkly pedantic scheme — but you will find 
it highly desirable to adopt a much simpler plan. 
You must read critically, of course, but your aim 
should be more to profit by what your author says 
than to indicate to him where he has gone wrong. 
A single line at the side to indicate an important 
passage, a double line for a more important passage, 
and a triple line — to be used very rarely indeed — 
for passages of vital moment, a ? here and there 
when you are not sure about the facts or opinions, 
or where you wish to make further inquiries, a 
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A Guide for All Students 

reference to some other part of the book where the 
same matter is dealt with, an indication of some 
other book or passage bearing on the same subject — 
these you will probably find sufficient for your pur- 
pose. It is a fundamental principle that the marks 
of importance mean importance to you, and not to 
people at large ; further, that they mean importance 
to you in connexion with the particular purpose 
you have before you in reading the book. Thus 
the marks you put on a book give it an individuality 
and make it of special value to you. When you want 
to refer to a passage in a book you have so marked, 
you have no difficulty in locating it by merely turning 
over the pages. For the only passages that you have 
remembered well enough to wish to recall are those 
that struck you most in your reading, and those 
will naturally have your "important" mark. You 
will, of course, realize that if you use marks very 
freely, you must pay for this by the increased diffi- 
culty of locating a passage afterwards. Moderation 
in marking is highly to be commended. 



I ml 



CHAPTER VII 



TEXT-BOOKS AND BOOKS OF 
REFERENCE 

ONE of my dictionaries tells me that a text- 
book is "a book containing the leading prin- 
ciples of a science." Another goes into more detail 
and explains that a text-book is "a volume, as of 
some classical author, on which a teacher lectures 
or comments; hence any manual of instruction; a 
school book." You will note that we have here two 
fundamentally different ideas of what a text-book is, 
and the difference arises from the relation assumed 
between the book and the teacher. The first defini- 
tion does not mention the teacher at all; the second 
puts him in the forefront. 

The connexion between the teacher and the text- 
book is an ancient one, and carries us back to very 
early times when there were few books indeed. 
There were, in fact, more teachers than books, and 
the business of the teachers was to acquire as much 
knowledge as they could from books and from inter- 
course with men, and then place this knowledge at 
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A Guide for All Students 

the disposal of their pupils. Very often their teach- 
ing took the form of reading and explaining the few 
books that were at that time available. In the old 
schools and universities the teachers and professors 
used to lecture on the writings of their predecessors. 
Thus the writings of men like Plato and Aristotle 
were read, explained and criticized in such a way as 
to bring out their full meaning. They were treated, 
in fact, pretty much as a modern clergyman deals 
with a text from the Scriptures. The text-book was 
thus the basis of the lecture, it was the authority, 
and the teacher took the subordinate position of a 
mere expounder of what another man had written. 
Often, no doubt, the comments of the teacher were 
of more value than the text on which he commented. 
This became increasingly common in connexion with 
subjects of a scientific character. Fresh discoveries 
were made, and mistakes were found in the text. 
These mistakes the teacher, of course, pointed out, 
in order that his hearers should know the truth. 
But such corrections had to be most carefully made, 
for those old people were very jealous for the honour 
of their established authorities. Aristotle, for ex- 
ample, became for centuries the recognized authority 
in a great many subjects. What he said was re- 
garded as final on any subject on which he had 
written, and hearers would not listen to anything 
opposed to him. Commentators, if they wanted to 
make any corrections, had to endeavour to show 
that the new things they wished to bring forward 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

were really implied in Aristotle, were, in fact, what 
Aristotle meant all the time, though it needed clever 
people like the lecturers to make this evident. 

As the excessive authority of the old writers 
waned, it was permitted to the lecturers to set forth 
their own discoveries, and gradually it became the 
custom for men who had acquired great knowledge 
or made important discoveries to gather together to 
exchange their knowledge among themselves, and to 
communicate to ordinary students as much of their 
learning as the students were ready to take in. 
Thus we had the gradual growth of the universities. 
At first the students merely listened to the professors 
and wrote down as much of what they heard as 
enabled them to store it up and carry it away with 
them from the university. With this part of the 
professors' work we shall deal more fully in our 
next chapter. Here we are interested in the change 
that took place on the invention of printing and the 
multiplication of books. When a learned man could 
put all his knowledge into the form of a book there 
was no longer an absolute necessity for people to 
assemble at certain centres so as to gather the knowl- 
edge that fell from the lips of the professors. The 
book began to take the place of the teacher. This 
is what underlies Carlyle's saying that the modern 
university is a library. 

So far as the communication of knowledge is con- 
cerned we may accept Carlyle's statement, though, 
as we have seen, there are other influences at work 
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A Guide for All Students 

in a university than those connected with the acquir- 
ing of information. In the meantime we are inter- 
ested in the nature of the text-book that has been 
evolved by the diffusion of knowledge and the multi- 
plication of printed matter. Not every text-book is 
meant to take the place of the teacher. At the pres- 
ent moment there are more text-books being printed 
for school use than ever before in the history of the 
world. But the way in which they are used is quite 
different from that of the old times. No doubt, even 
yet, in dealing with the teaching of foreign languages 
we have the pupils provided with a standard book in 
a certain language, which book is used in the good 
old-fashioned way as a "text" on which pupil and 
teacher alike work as the basis of their studies. Fur- 
ther, it has to be admitted that in a less legitimate 
way teachers of poor attainments and low ideals of 
their profession supply their pupils with text-books 
in various subjects, and use these text-books as the 
authority. Such teachers depend upon the books 
for the information the pupils have to acquire. The 
text-book is the master, and the teacher the mere 
expounder of what is to be found there. 

But the really well-informed and capable teacher 
uses the text-book in a totally different way. For 
him it is an aid, and not a master. It supplies the 
broad outlines of the subject and fills in the necessary 
details. It saves the teacher from the mechanical 
labour of writing out lists and putting on the black- 
board long tables of facts that are important in them- 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

selves, but that are common property and demand 
no special ability either to discover or to understand. 
The teacher's business is to guide his pupils in their 
approach to a new subject, to warn them of pitfalls, 
and to present matters in such a way as to avoid 
unnecessary expenditure of time. He must, above 
everything, see that the subject is treated in such a 
way as to meet the special needs of the pupils here 
and now before him. He must mediate between the 
text-book and his pupils. That is what a teacher is 
for. 

Instead of taking the book and talking round it, 
the real teacher deals with the subject itself and 
falls back upon the book to supply illustrative matter, 
and to give in a permanent form isolated facts that 
otherwise would be forgotten if they were presented 
only once to the pupil in the course of a lesson, 
however excellently that lesson had been given. In 
the hands of a good teacher the main function of 
the text-book is to secure careful preparation and 
steady revision. The poorest teacher of all is the 
one who does nothing more than prescribe a certain 
portion of the text-book to be prepared for each 
day's lesson and in the class hour find out by ques- 
tions whether the pupils have learned the portion 
set for their study. If this is the only use made of 
text-books the value of the teacher does not appear 
to be very great. All that he does is to act as a sort 
of external conscience and see that the pupils do 
their work. A student with a good working con- 
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A Guide for All Students 

science of his own could do quite well without a 
teacher of this kind. In fact, the private student 
does use the text-book just in this way. He treats 
it as a book containing the leading principles of his 
subject, and sets himself to acquire those principles 
from the book by his own efforts. 

With regard to text-books, students fall naturally 
into two classes. Some prefer to have all their in- 
struction at the hands of teachers; they like to be 
told things, to have matters presented to them by 
the human voice. Others like to have facts set down 
before them in the cold black and white of print, 
and to have time to deal with them at their own pace 
and in their own way. The chances are that you 
who read this book belong to the second class. The 
very fact that you are taking the trouble to read these 
pages shows that you want to take the matter of 
education into your own hands and set about it in 
your own way. But you are not to suppose that the 
presence of a teacher is a disadvantage. It is quite 
the opposite. The wise student will take every 
opportunity to come under the influence of good 
teachers, but he will at the same time make all his 
arrangements to get the greatest benefit from both 
teacher and text-book. He will make each supple- 
ment the other. In the last resort, if a teacher is 
unavailable, the really earnest student will be able 
to make shift with the text-book alone. 

So we come now to a consideration of the nature 
of the text-book itself. This varies according to the 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

account it takes of the personality of the person who 
is to use it. Some text-books do not consider the 
student at all. The only concern of the author is 
to make the best possible presentation of his subject. 
Above everything he desires to give a logically 
arranged statement of the important facts in their 
true relation to each other. The subject is every- 
thing. Such books are veritable "texts." They 
almost demand a teacher: the matter is stated in 
such a bald way that the ordinary student has little 
chance of mastering the subject, while the somewhat 
easy-going student is supplied with no moral incen- 
tive to effort. The teacher can supply to the ordinary 
student explanations and expansions, and can apply 
stimulus to the indifferent one. The private student 
finds such books very difficult. Of course, if he has 
the intelligence and the grit to face and conquer 
them, he has a corresponding reward; for there is 
no triumph like that of mastering a difficult subject 
by sheer force of intelligent application. 

Other text-books, particularly of recent years, do 
take account of the nature of the pupil. They recog- 
nize the distinction between presenting the matter 
from the point of view of the person who knows 
it all already and from the point of view of the 
person who is making his first acquaintance with 
the subject. The old Latin Grammars, for example 
began with the declensions and worked their way 
mercilessly through the whole of the Accident and 
Syntax without taking the least account of how it 
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A Guide for All Students 

all struck the pupil. The rules were stated with great 
exactness and numberless exceptions were duly 
noted. Everything was as complete as the scholar- 
author could make it. The newer kind of Latin 
Grammar includes explanations and exercises. The 
pupil is let into the secrets of things: he is told what 
it is all about. Many of the newer text-books 
frankly adopt the pupil's standpoint, and address 
him in the second person. Others are a little afraid 
of going so far, and content themselves with refer- 
ring in the third person to the student, saying that 
he will find this or that the better way to go about 
his work. Problems are often given, along with 
certain hints that help the student towards a solution. 
It is clear that in all this we are trenching upon the 
teacher's province. The text-book is becoming, to 
some extent, a teacher on its own account. There 
are now, in fact, all degrees of the personal appeal 
in text-books, from the sternly logical kind in which 
personality of all sorts is rigidly excluded to the 
kindly, confidential style of the "self-educator" text- 
books, that frankly try to take the place of the 
teacher altogether. The fewer the opportunities the 
student has of obtaining the services of capable 
teachers, the more he is inclined to fall back upon the 
text-books that make the personal appeal. But the 
private student should not confine himself to books 
of this class. He ought always to have on hand one 
or two text-books of the severely logical type, and 
make the best he can of them. 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

In using the more rigid kind .of text-book the 
student who has no teacher should not make the 
mistake of thinking that he must follow the exact 
order of the book in dealing with the different parts 
of the subject-matter. He must approach the book 
as a source of information, but he is entitled to get 
that information in any order that he finds most 
convenient. He will first make an inspection of the 
book as a whole. Too frequently the student takes 
up a new text-book and merely sits down and starts 
at the beginning with the intention of going right on. 
But this is a bad way of beginning with some books. 
You should always make up your mind what you 
expect to get from anything you propose to read. 
This is essential in order that you may bring to your 
reading a mind ready to profit by what is presented 
to you. In books of the kind we are at present 
considering the preface usually gives little help. It 
generally deals with matters that interest the author 
rather than help the reader. The list of contents, 
however, is usually more enlightening and provides 
a sort of bill of fare from which you may choose 
what is most likely to prove of use to you. The 
index, too, must not be overlooked. It often sup- 
plies a clue to the place where is to be found the 
particular kind of information you desire. Your 
plan, of course, is to begin such a book as this at 
whatever point presents the closest connexion with 
your present knowledge. Books of this kind are 
to be read for the information they supply, so your 
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A Guide for All Students 

conscience may be easy in the matter of skipping. 
You may quite wisely make up your mind that you 
are going to master the book as a whole, but this 
resolution in no way militates against the plan of 
dealing with the book by instalments selected at your 
discretion. In reading it is as true as in warfare 
that we should divide and conquer. 

Before leaving the question of text-books it is 
worth while combating a popular view that a text- 
book has served its turn when it has given up its 
information to the reader. Some students, in fact, 
have the detestable habit of selling all their old text- 
books as soon as they have served their turn. The 
arguments in favour of this plan are plausible 
enough. Such books are valuable only for the in- 
formation they impart; when that information is 
mastered they are of no more value to us than is the 
debris that we call a sucked-orange. Besides, prog- 
ress, especially in the sciences, is so rapid that an 
old text-book becomes antiquated almost as soon as 
we have done with it. This last consideration is the 
only one that counts. All the rest are based on 
ignorance of the special value to us of any text-book 
that we have thoroughly studied. We have a greater 
familiarity with that text-book than with any other 
on the subject. We know our way about in it. We 
are able, with the minimum expenditure of time, to 
get out of it any information we want. We have 
a special interest in the book. It represents, in fact, 
a certain amount of paid-up intellectual capital that 
[187] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

is squandered if we part from that particular book. 
If the subject dealt with in the text-book is one in 
which we are likely to maintain an interest in after 
life, there could be no better way of keeping up to 
date in it than by making from time to time the 
various corrections in our old text-book that ad- 
vances in the subject make necessary. There is the 
further advantage in retaining our old text-books 
that they supply in the most effective way a record 
of our intellectual experience. No one who has 
not tried it can realize the efficiency of an old 
text-book in reviving in the mind the intellectual 
experiences that marked the original study of the 
subject. 

In your general pursuit of knowledge you cannot 
confine yourself to text-books. In these, more or 
less systematic information is presented in certain 
definite subjects, but there are subjects that you are 
not studying systematically and that yet come your 
way in general reading and in connexion with com- 
position or ordinary intercourse, and it becomes 
essential to know how to get answers to the questions 
that are constantly arising out of our ignorance. 
Now there is a group of books that resemble the 
severer kind of text-books in that they exclude the 
personal element and depend for their value on their 
strictly logical arrangement. These are known by 
the general name of "books of reference," and an 
important part of our education consists in acquiring 
familiarity with these means of meeting the sudden 
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A Guide for All Students 

demands for information that are so frequent in 
actual life. The characteristic of books of reference 
is that they are so arranged as to provide, with the 
minimum expenditure of time, the precise informa- 
tion we may at any moment require. A text-book 
is to be used steadily and mastered as a whole. A 
book of reference is to be used only to the extent 
that it happens to be required. 

The dictionary is probably the most characteristic 
book of reference, and the importance of the dis- 
tinction between a text-book and a book of reference 
may be well illustrated by a misuse that is some- 
times made of the dictionary as a source book. We 
naturally and properly appeal to the dictionary for 
the meanings of words that have troubled us in our 
reading or speaking, but we should not go to it to 
discover new words to use. We have seen that old- 
fashioned schoolmasters used to make up little dic- 
tionaries of words in order that their pupils might 
have their vocabularies enlarged. But the proper 
way to enlarge our vocabulary is to have intercourse 
with others and to read widely. In this way we get 
the meaning of words from seeing and hearing them 
used, and when we are in doubt about a word we go 
to the dictionary. It is true that at school exercises 
are often set for the very purpose of giving practice 
in the use of words, and as an exercise this is not 
open to objection. But there is sometimes a danger 
of carrying dictionary work too far. There is, for 
example, a book, excellent in itself but liable to 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

abuse, that seeks to combine the dictionary function 
with the word-supplying function. It is known as 
Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 
Classified and Arranged so as to facilitate the ex- 
pression of Ideas and assist in Literary Composition. 
The very word Thesaurus, meaning treasure-house, 
reminds us of the old-fashioned books of the same 
sort. The first half of the book is arranged in such 
a way that the words are classified under six cate- 
gories or headings. We have words dealing with 
each of the following six subjects, (i) Abstract 
Relations, (2) Space, (3) the Material World, (4) 
Intellect, (5) Volition, (6) Sentient and Moral 
Powers. The idea seems to be that if we are writing 
on any of these subjects we might naturally consult 
the vocabularies in order to get the proper words for 
our purpose. On the other hand, the second half 
of the book is made up of a list of words alphabeti- 
cally arranged and with references to the place where 
the word occurs in the first half, so that if a reader 
has a difficulty with a word he may turn it up under 
its proper category and see it explained and illus- 
trated by quotations. Though the book may be 
quite wisely studied as a text-book, its best use is 
certainly as a book of reference. 

The danger of going to a dictionary to get a word 
to use in a composition is well illustrated in the 
misuse of the English side of the dictionary of a 
foreign language. In learning languages other than 
our own we have to use the dictionary a great deal, 
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A Guide for All Students 

but we ought to use almost exclusively the part of 
the dictionary that gives the foreign words followed 
by their English equivalents. Thus, when we are 
studying Latin, we have two parts to our dictionary : 
one is called Latin-English, the other English-Latin. 
Now the student should confine himself almost 
entirely to the Latin-English part. My Latin pro- 
fessor at the university used to say that he would 
gladly make a bonfire of all the English-Latin dic- 
tionaries in the world. His animosity was aroused 
because students, in translating English into Latin 
prose, would go to the English-Latin part and find 
there words that they had never seen before and 
use them in a wrong sense. The careless schoolboy 
looks up a word in his English-Latin dictionary and 
finds perhaps a list of half a dozen equivalents. If 
he is a simple soul he selects the first and uses it. 
If he is more sophisticated he selects one about the 
end of the list, to show that he has really looked 
at them all. It is a mere chance if he hits upon a 
reasonable word to fit into his context. The danger 
is greatly enhanced if the dictionary is a mere list 
of words, a vocabulary. With a dictionary of this 
kind a boy will unblushingly present pater genus 
as his version of "kind father." It is true that genus 
means kind, but kind in the sense of sort or species. 
Here the word genus is a substantive or noun and 
obviously is not to be used as an adjective, and a 
student who had exercised the least care would have 
been warned off such a mistake by finding after 
[I9i] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

the word the contraction subs, or at anyrate the 
letter n. 

Sometimes, to be sure, there is a list of nouns 
that look equally well to the student, and he has 
to take his choice among them. Thus, in French, 
a boy may show up the sentence : "M. Rondeau 
etait la meilleure allumette de la ville." When he 
looked up the word match, he had his choice of 
egal, pareil, parti, manage, alliance, allumette, and 
meche. Of these the only one he was sure could 
not be right was mariage, since it would be absurd 
to say that a man was a marriage. He did not like 
to take the very last word offered, so compromised 
on allumette. 

The same thing naturally applies to adjectives. 
The word chosen may be an adjective right enough 
and yet not the right adjective. When a student 
shows up "une opinion indigente" as French for "a 
poor opinion," he is using a wrong adjective. In 
this particular case, the boy explained that he knew 
the ordinary French word for poor all right, but 
pauvre seemed to him too easy and common a word ; 
so he had looked up the English part of his dic- 
tionary and thus come to disaster. If this boy had 
had any feeling for words, he would have guessed 
from its English equivalent that the adjective in- 
digent had to do with the particular kind of poverty 
that can be expressed in terms of lack of money, 
and therefore has nothing to do with a matter of 
opinion. The boy was right enough, as it happens, 
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A Guide for All Students 

in thinking that pauvre was too familiar a word for 
this connexion, and with his limited knowledge of 
French he could not be expected to be aware that 
the appropriate word is triste. Still, if he had had 
the sense and the opportunity of turning up a bigger 
dictionary, one that gives illustrative instances, it is 
almost certain that he would have found an example 
of triste used in this special sense. 

Without going the length, then, of burning all 
the English-Foreign dictionaries, we may lay down 
the principle that these should be used sparingly. 
In particular, small dictionaries of this kind are to 
be avoided. These are little more than lists of 
words, with no indication of special connexions in 
which they should be used. Most of the bigger dic- 
tionaries give such suggestions about the nature of 
the words as prevent the careful student from mak- 
ing a serious misuse of a term. We are always 
entitled to use the English side of a dictionary when 
we remember vaguely the sort of word we want 
and feel sure that we would recognize it when we 
see it. For example, we may know definitely that 
there is a French equivalent for donkey, and that 
it is different from the ordinary word dne, but we 
forget what that equivalent is. When we turn up 
the dictionary under the word donkey and find the 
word haudet, we know that that is exactly what we 
want. We recognize the word, though we were 
unable to recall it. Speaking generally, indeed, the 
English part of a foreign dictionary should always 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

be used under the condition that it is in every case 
to be edited by the experience of the student. It is 
a capital rule never to use a word that we find in 
a dictionary unless we have some memory of having 
seen that word actually used in the language in 
question. The student, in fact, is entitled to any 
word a book can offer him, if only his previous 
knowledge is sufficient to enable him to make an 
intelligent use of that word. 

You will note that stress has been laid on the size 
of a dictionary, and this has been done deliberately, 
for size is an important factor in determining the 
use to be made of a dictionary, whether foreign or 
English. Even in the case of the purely English 
dictionary we have various sizes, with their corre- 
sponding uses. First of all there is the little diction- 
ary that lies on the desk of the person who is shaky 
in spelling. Where meanings of words come into 
consideration, a somewhat larger dictionary is re- 
quired. A further demand for the derivation of 
words and their history makes still bigger books 
necessary. Then we come to dictionaries that give 
all manner of illustrative quotations under each 
word. To these there is almost no limit of size. The 
Century Dictionary (six volumes), The Standard 
Dictionary (two huge volumes), The Imperial Dic- 
tionary (four volumes), The Encyclopaedic Diction- 
ary (seven volumes and a supplementary volume) 
are all excellent. They combine the good qualities 
of a dictionary with those of an effective small 
[ 194] 



A Guide for All Students 

encyclopaedia. In this respect they differ from the 
monumental work edited by Sir James A. H. 
Murray, called A New English Dictionary on His- 
torical Principles, or, for short, The Oxford Dic- 
tionary. This is often spoken of as the greatest 
dictionary that has ever been published. It is purely 
literary, omits the encyclopaedic element, and 
specializes on the use of words as words. It is 
specially valuable through its copious illustrations 
of words as found in standard authors and in ordi- 
nary speech. 

So far we have been dealing with ordinary dic- 
tionaries, in which the main interest is in words, but 
the convenience of the alphabetical arrangement of 
information is so great that it has been applied in 
other directions. At the end of any of the bigger 
dictionaries you will find lists of various kinds all 
giving information that it is hardly the business of 
the ordinary dictionary-maker to provide. Thus, 
turning to the end of the second volume of my copy 
of Webster's International Dictionary of the Eng- 
lish Language, I find the following additional dic- 
tionaries : ( i ) an Explanatory and Pronouncing 
Dictionary of the Names of Fictitious Persons, 
Places, etc.; (2) a Pronouncing Gazeteer or Geo- 
graphical Dictionary of the World; (3) a Pronounc- 
ing Biographical Dictionary; (4) a Pronouncing 
Vocabulary of Greek and Latin Proper Names; (5) 
a Pronouncing Vocabulary of Common English 
Christian Names; (6) a Dictionary of Quotations, 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

Words, Phrases, Proverbs and Colloquial Expres- 
sions from the Greek, the Latin, and Modern 
Foreign Languages; (7) an Alphabetical Catalogue 
of Abbreviations and Contractions used in Writing 
and Printing; (8) a List of the Arbitrary Signs 
used in Writing and Printing. 

It is difficult to realize what a storehouse of infor- 
mation is here provided. With one of those big 
dictionaries at hand, with its supplementary lists, it 
is astonishing how independent the private student 
may be. These supplementary lists are often quite 
interesting in themselves, and an idle half-hour 
might be worse spent than in glancing over them. 
But this is not the use for which they are intended. 
Just as the ordinary dictionary is not meant to 
supply words to be used, so these special dictionaries 
are not meant to give information as a text-book 
would, but to supply at a moment's notice a piece of 
information that is necessary to enable us to under- 
stand something that we are reading or studying. 
Some authors are very "allusive," by which it is 
meant that they are much given to referring without 
explanation to things found in other books and 
languages. A well-educated and widely-read man 
can usually follow all the references made by such 
allusive writers, but a young student cannot be ex- 
pected to catch on to all the author suggests. It 
is in trouble of this kind that these supplementary 
dictionaries are a very present help. Frequently 
you will have to spend a little more time over a 
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A Guide for All Students 

matter than you need have had you but had fuller 
information to start with. For example, a student 
came across a reference to a person called Prester 
John. He looked up the Biographical Dictionary 
first, under Prester and then under John, without 
success. Then he turned to the Dictionary of Ficti- 
tious Persons, where he found this was "the name 
given in the Middle Ages to a supposed Christian 
sovereign and priest of the interior of Asia, whose 
dominions were variously placed." In this case the 
student was somewhat to blame for the time he 
wasted in looking up the Biographical Dictionary 
first, for the passage that had led him to make in- 
quiries ran, "as mythical as Prester John." From 
this he ought at once to have inferred that he was 
dealing with a person to be found among the fiction 
group. A little preliminary reflection often saves a 
deal of unnecessary investigation. 

Separate dictionaries are also published of Biogra- 
phies, Fictitious Persons, Quotations and what not. 
There is one in particular that is invaluable to all 
readers who are anxious to have light thrown upon 
obscure references in their reading. It is called A 
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 1 : is the work of 
Dr. E. C. Brewer; and contains all sorts of curious 
information, arranged in a very convenient way. 

Certain dictionaries are not very much to be recom- 
mended, since they are prepared to meet a need that 
ought not to arise. A Rhyming Dictionary, for 

^assell : published price, 10s. 6d. 
[197] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

example, supplies lists of words that rhyme with any 
given words. If you want a word to rhyme with 
larch, you turn up this dictionary, where you find 
the words arranged alphabetically, but placed accord- 
ing to their last letter instead of the first. Thus for 
larch we turn to the h's, then run down till we come 
to the ch's, the rch's, and finally reach the arch's. 
In one such dictionary 1 we find the following list : 
arch, search, cimeliarch, chiliarch, mysteriarch, 
patriarch, hcresiarch, larch, March, anarch, monarch, 
parch, hierarch, tetrarch, starch. Obviously not all 
these words rhyme with larch, though they all end 
in the same four letters. The reader is supposed to 
use his intelligence in selecting what meets his needs. 
Other rhyming dictionaries confine themselves to 
words that do rhyme. Thus in one dictionary 2 is 
found the following list : arch, march, parch, starch, 
and the reader has the assurance that he has here 
all the possible English rhymes to larch. 

But as a matter of fact, many people object to this 
hunting for rhymes. They maintain that unless the 
appropriate words suggest themselves there is little 
chance of anything really artistic resulting. The 
objection is the same as that we made to the use of 
the dictionary as a mere verbal mine from which to 
dig out words to express our meaning. I have heard 
this word-digging defended by a reference to what 
Kipling says of his early work : "I dredged the dic- 

1 Walker's Rhyming Dictionary (Routledge). 
2 The Rhymer's Lexicon (Routledge). 

[193] 



A Guide for All Students 

tionary for adjectives." But when you consider the 
matter, you will see that he was not seeking 
unknown adjectives by running his eye up and down 
the columns of the dictionary. What he did was 
to use the dictionary as a reviver of words with 
which he was familiar. In the same way a rhyming 
dictionary may be to some extent justified as a means 
of presenting a complete list of the possibilities, the 
whole merit of the writer lying in the skill with 
which he chooses the appropriate word. 

A dictionary of synonyms is open to somewhat 
the same objection as the rhyming dictionary, 
though perhaps in a less degree ; for it is conceivable 
that a student may want to look up synonyms in 
order to discriminate carefully among them, and 
not merely 'to find a word to alternate with another. 
Remember that in the last resort there are really 
no such things as synonyms. However alike two 
words may appear to be in meaning, there is always 
just that shade of difference between them that 
makes one right and the other wrong in any par- 
ticular case. It is this delicate perception of the only 
word that really suits the particular occasion that 
marks the artist in words. 

There is another kind of dictionary that is of 
great use to all who have much to do with reading 
and writing. This is called a concordance, and con- 
sists of a collection of the more striking passages 
in any author arranged under the characteristic words 
to be found in these passages. This enables us to 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

find with the minimum of trouble exactly where a 
certain passage occurs. If we wish, for example, 
to find where the passage "The wages of sin is 
death" occurs in the Bible, we take a concordance 
of the Bible and turn up any one of the important 
words — wages, sin, death — and we find the passage 
quoted, with the reference Romans 6. 23. Now 
though it is true that the passage occurs in the con- 
cordance under all three words, it is not a matter 
of indifference which of them you choose as your 
guide. The principle to follow is always to select 
the word that is least common. Of the three words, 
wages, sin, death, the first is to be preferred, as it 
does not occur so frequently in the Bible as the other 
two. ki point of fact, if you care to look up a Bible 
concordance, you will find that there are not more 
than about fourteen references under wages, while 
there are two or three columns of references to sin, 
and about as many to death. There are concord- 
ances to several of our great writers. Mrs. Cowden 
Clarke has an excellent Complete Concordance to 
Shakespeare, for example, and though there is 
not yet a complete concordance to Dickens, there 
is an excellent Dickens' Dictionary, by Gilbert A. 
Pierce, which provides a "Key to the Charac- 
ters and Principal Incidents in the Tales of Charles 
Dickens." 

You will have noticed that the use of the word 
"dictionary" is rather loose. Referring to Webster, 
I find that dictionary means, in the first place, "a 
[ 200] 



A Guide for All Students 

book containing the words of a language arranged 
alphabetically, with explanations of their meanings ; 
a lexicon; a vocabulary; a word-book"; and in a 
secondary way, "a book containing the words be- 
longing to any system or province of knowledge ; as 
a dictionary of medicine or of botany ; a biographical 
dictionary." The point common to the principal 
and the derived meaning of the word dictionary is 
clearly that it deals with "the words," and with 
these in an alphabetical order. Its business is re- 
garded as complete when it has given the meanings 
of the words involved, whether in connexion with 
Medicine, Botany, or Charles Dickens. The sub- 
ject-matter is not the important thing, but the words 
and their special application. Yet it is clear that 
we often go to a dictionary for information that 
does not stop at words. In some of our bigger 
dictionaries, for example, we get a fairly full account 
of certain things, with drawings and descriptions 
that certainly carry us far beyond the range of mere 
words. And, after all, this tendency of dictionaries 
to become storehouses of general knowledge is only 
a recurrence to what was a former use of the word 
dictionary. 

When books were rare and knowledge limited, 
there was not the same dividing up of the realm 
of knowledge into separate departments that is com- 
mon to-day. People did not then talk about "sub- 
jects" as we do. With the limited amount of 
knowledge then available it was not impudent, as 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

it would be now, for a man to "take all knowledge 
to his province." Accordingly it was not unusual 
for a man to write a treatise in which he hoped to 
include all human knowledge. Even as late as the 
sixteenth century it was still possible for a man 
to publish an encyclopaedia that was supposed to 
exhaust human knowledge. Early in the seven- 
teenth century we have an encyclopaedia published 
by Johann Heinrich Alsted. This professed to give 
a complete account of human knowledge, but was 
supersedeas in 1673 by an encyclopaedia published 
by a Frenchman called Louis Moreri. The great im- 
provement introduced by Moreri was that he did not 
attempt to arrange his matter like Alsted on what 
was called a scientific basis. He did not classify 
his information according to the connexion of one 
subject with another. He adopted the alphabetic 
system, so that while his readers did not have, as in 
Alsted's work, a consecutive presentation of knowl- 
edge, they had the great advantage of being able 
to turn at a moment's notice to the particular bit 
of knowledge that they wanted. It is obvious that 
in introducing this change Moreri acknowledged the 
predominance of words, that his work was, in fact, 
a dictionary rather than a mere encyclopaedia. In- 
deed, he marked his change in attitude by the adop- 
tion of a different form of title. He dropped 
Alsted's word Encyclopedia and called his work The 
Great Historical Dictionary. Since his time the 
alphabetic arrangement has been found so satis fac- 
[ 202 ] 



A Guide for All Students 

tory that it has been retained in all the important 
encyclopaedias that have succeeded his 

You will see, then, that our bigger dictionaries 
are becoming practically small encyclopaedias, the 
main difference being that the dictionaries still retain 
their loyalty to words to the extent of including 
every word, as a word, giving its use and derivation 
and other etymological particulars, while the en- 
cyclopaedias content themselves with giving only 
those words that represent matters that require 
explanation. The dictionaries still retain such words 
as do, between, often, and, hullo, which, pleasant, 
while the encyclopaedia confines itself mainly to 
nouns or such other parts of speech as have acquired 
a substantive meaning by their connexion with other 
matters. The dictionary is, therefore, still the proper 
court of appeal in matters of words, while the 
encyclopaedia is a storehouse of easily accessible 
information about things or persons. 

Encyclopaedias vary considerably in size, and 
with the size we should vary our use of them. We 
should use a little encyclopaedia in quite a different 
way from a big one. The biggest encyclopaedia ever 
published is known as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
It is a very old book, the last volume of the first 
edition being published in 1771. It has, of course, 
been revised from time to time, and the current 
edition has been brought up to date and appears in 
thirty-two large volumes. The smaller encyclopaedias 
may be represented by Chambers' Encyclopaedia in 
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Making the Most of One's Mind 

ten volumes, and Harms-worth's Encyclopaedia in 
the same number of 'volumes of a somewhat smaller 
size. For many purposes the student will find the 
smaller encyclopaedias of more use than the larger. 
To begin with, they have the matter more condensed. 
As a rule you do not want a complete account of any 
subject. You want merely that bit of the subject 
that meets your immediate needs. When you turn 
up a subject in the Britannica you are frequently 
met by a treatise that would make quite a respectable 
volume if published by itself, and the chances are 
that if you are looking for some particular fact you 
will find great difficulty in separating it out from 
the mass of other material that the encyclopaedia so 
generously provides. These long articles are often 
of the greatest value in themselves. They are really 
standard treatises on their subjects by specialists of 
established reputation, and for those who mean to 
study a subject they afford excellent material. But 
regarding an encyclopaedia as largely a sort of first- 
aid supply of information, you will probably find it 
to your advantage to keep to the smaller kinds. 

To obviate the difficulty of finding what you want 
in the Britannica, its publishers have added an index, 
which forms a volume by itself, and is most helpful 
to the student. It seems rather a queer thing that 
an encyclopaedia, the subjects of which are arranged 
on an alphabetic classification, should require an 
index. But it is obvious that since certain articles 
are as big as ordinary books, it cannot be always 
[204] 



A Guide for All Students 

possible to set out the matter in such a way that the 
general reader can be sure to pick out just those 
elements that he may happen to need at a particular 
moment. There cannot be a separate heading for 
every item that is to be found within the covers of 
such huge books. 

To .illustrate the use of the encyclopaedia, let us 
take my experience with regard to an Italian called 
Uccello. I had a vague impression that I had read 
or heard somewhere that this Uccello was the origi- 
nator of the science of Perspective. I had occasion 
to use the origin of certain sciences as an illustration 
in a lecture I was preparing, and I wanted to verify 
my vague impression. Now this verification of 
floating knowledge is one of the chief functions of 
the encyclopaedia. Accordingly I turned to my 
Britannica (which was the Ninth, and not the newest, 
Edition) and looked up under U, but found no 
reference to Uccello. Next I looked up the index 
and there found a reference to a mountain in Italy 
called by this name. This did not promise very 
much, as I was in search of a man, not a mountain. 
However, in case there might be a connexion be- 
tween the man and the mountain, I turned as directed 
to Vol. XIII and found that the Pizzo d'Uccello was 
6155 feet high. As this did not seem to advance 
matters much, I deserted Uccello and turned to 
Perspective. But all the Britannica had to say under 
this head was "See Projection." Naturally I pro- 
ceeded to see Projection. But there I had little satis- 
[205] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

faction, for the gentleman who treated of Perspective 
as part of this subject was too much taken up with 
his complicated drawings to spare any time for the 
history of the development of the science. Turning, 
however, to the small print at the end of the article, 
I found the note that Perspective dates back to the 
time of the Greek mathematicians, but that its 
modern developments cannot be traced farther back 
than the time of the Renaissance, "when the first 
books on the subject appeared in Italy." This so 
far confirmed my first impression, but it was now 
necessary to find out what Uccello's share was in this 
development. 

My next reference was to Harmsworth's Encyclo- 
paedia, where under the heading Uccello I found 
that this was the name of a person known otherwise 
as Paolo di Dono, who was born at Florence and 
lived from 1396 to 1475 > tnat ne was a pupil of and 
collaborator with the famous Ghiberti ; and that 
he afterwards studied painting. Chambers' Encyclo- 
paedia did not include Uccello under U; but in the 
article on Perspective this book told me that the 
subject was known to the ancients, that the knowl- 
edge had been lost during the dark ages, but had 
been revived by Albert Diirer, and Brambantino, 
and that its rules had been extended by Peruzzi and 
Ubaldi (about 1600). This did not look very well 
for Uccello's claims, and gave me a bias against him, 
for I had been asking myself why he had acquired 
the additional name Uccello. I knew that this was 
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A Guide for All Students 

the Italian word for a bird, but that it was also used 
in a contemptuous sense to mean a simpleton. I 
asked myself whether the man di Dono was called 
Uccello in contempt. Everything tended to dis- 
countenance the view that he had originated the 
science, and had I had to make up my mind on the 
spot, I should have voted against him. 

Fortunately, however, I was not pressed for a 
decision, and I was able to wait till next day, when 
I could consult authorities that were not available 
in my study. In the newest edition of the Britannica 
I found that the index gave three references to 
Uccello, one under Bellini, one under Glass, and one 
under Fresco. But on turning up the places I found 
nothing but a passing reference to some of Uccello's 
paintings. With the New International Encyclo- 
paedia I was more fortunate, for under Uccello I 
was told that he was so called because of his fond- 
ness for birds. This cleared him from the charge 
of being a simpleton. But more important was the 
note that "under Manetti he acquired the facility in 
Perspective which became the main feature of his 
work." This closed the inquiry, so far as my pur- 
pose was concerned. If Uccello had a master in 
Perspective he could not properly be said to originate 
the science, though he might well be its most brilliant 
exponent. Had my main interest been in the evolu- 
tion of Perspective, my next proceeding would natu- 
rally have been to follow up Manetti in his turn. 
Indeed there is always a temptation to the intelligent 
[207] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

student to follow up any inquiry on which he starts. 
But this temptation must be resisted. When we are 
at a loose end, it may be quite a desirable thing 
to follow up interesting investigations, but we must 
keep in view in our studies the main lines, so as to 
make systematic progress, and not be allured into 
following the strange gods of desultory reading. 
So long, however, as we maintain a rational con- 
nexion among the various parts of our studies, we 
may find it highly desirable to follow the clues sup- 
plied by books of reference. 

While the encyclopaedia may be regarded as 
mainly a first-aid knowledge-provider in cases of 
emergency, it has also a function that connects it 
with the text-book. A student may want not so 
much help with a particular point as a general treat- 
ment of a subject with indication of how to get 
further knowledge about it. Now at the end of 
every article of any importance in a modern encyclo- 
paedia there are to be found a few notes about where 
further information on the subject treated is to be 
obtained. Notes of this kind, giving references 
to books or periodicals or documents where further 
information may be had on a given subject, are 
called bibliographies, and it is becoming more and 
more usual to give a bibliography, not only at the 
end of an important article in an encyclopaedia, but 
also at the end of an ordinary book. These bibli- 
ographies serve the double purpose of giving the 
reader some idea of the sources from which the 
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A Guide for All Students 

author has derived his information, and suggesting 
lines along which the reader can proceed in working 
up the subject still further. It is becoming more 
and more usual in giving such bibliographies to 
supply a running commentary on each of the books 
or papers mentioned, so that the reader is enabled 
to know the sort of information he may expect 
to get from each of them. For it is not to be sup- 
posed that an ordinary reader is in a position to 
read all the books suggested on a given subject, even 
if he were able to procure them. 

Elderly teachers, professors, clergymen, and liter- 
ary men generally have a little grudge against young 
people who have essays to write or addresses to 
deliver at literary societies. These young people 
have an exacting way of writing to their elderly 
acquaintances, and even to people whom they have 
never met, asking for a list of books on the subjects 
on which they have chosen to write or speak. But 
a great part of the value of the training involved in 
preparing such essays and speeches is gained by 
discovering sources for ourselves. The lowest state 
of all is that of the person who says, "I am very 
anxious to write, if I only knew what to write 
about." This is a hopeless case, and such persons 
should be urged not to trouble about writing at all. 
But once you have selected a subject, there need be 
little difficulty in getting sufficient matter. Locke 
has an account of the pitiable condition of children 
who are asked to do a composition and wander about 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

among their elders saying "pray give me a little 
sense." These children are in exactly the same 
position as those who plead for literary help. Some 
of them, in fact, do not content themselves with ask- 
ing for a list of books, but coolly ask for "argu- 
ments and lists of heads and illustrations." Con- 
sider here what we have already said about providing 
our own premises. It is not, of course, possible to 
invent facts. We must content ourselves with the 
facts that are available, but in constructive thinking 
the choice of relevant facts is of the essence of the 
whole matter. In dealing with a book that has been 
recommended to us by some one else we must still, 
it is true, make our own choice of the facts that are 
of importance for our purpose. But the choice of 
the book itself is a preliminary for which we ought 
to make ourselves responsible. 

With the abundance and variety of books of refer- 
ence now available there is not the slightest difficulty 
in boring into the very heart of any subject. An 
ordinary alphabetical encyclopaedia provides an im- 
mediate introduction to the subject as a whole, and 
supplies you with a list of books, any one of which 
is almost sure to give references to many more. Be- 
fore you have spent a fortnight on the subject you 
have at your disposal a list of books that would 
take years to exhaust. Naturally you have to exer- 
cise a certain amount of common sense and intelli- 
gence. That's what study is for. If you are 
invited to give an account of Shakespeare's England, 
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A Guide for All Students 

it is not reasonable to turn to the encyclopaedia and 
read up all it has to say about Shakespeare, and then 
all it has to say about England. A great deal of the 
article on Shakespeare will be found to be quite 
irrelevant, and practically the whole of the article on 
England is beside the point. The real problem is 
what sort of England did we have between the years 
1564 and 1616? 

The answer is not to be obtained directly from 
any one article. You have to look at the matter 
from the point of view of history and common sense. 
You will turn to your old history book that you 
studied as a pupil, and there look up your period and 
revive your memory of what the late Tudor and 
early Stuart period was like. You will pay special 
attention to the section on social conditions. Then 
you will turn to whatever books on Shakespeare are 
easily accessible, and glancing through the contents 
and the index select whatever seems relevant to 
the particular matters you are considering. The 
Britannica article on Shakespeare, for example, gives 
about six large pages at the beginning to matters 
that directly bear on this subject. There is a mix- 
ture of geography and history that supplies just the 
material you require, and if you have in view only 
a short school essay, you have all that is necessary. 
But even for this purpose it is always well to consult 
more than one authority. What is wanted is your 
reaction to the facts that you discover, not a mere 
restatement of what you find in a book, and naturally 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

if you have consulted only one book you have a 
strong tendency merely to reproduce, whereas when 
you have consulted many authorities, you must at 
least collate. 

If you have in view a more ambitious essay, you 
will naturally have to go farther afield. You will, 
of course, consult the bibliography at the end of the 
Shakespeare article, and see first which of the books 
referred to bear upon your subject, and then which 
of these suitable books are available at whatever 
library is open to you. Naturally you will consult 
the "subject catalogue" at your library, under vari- 
ous heads that you think likely to offer help : Shake- 
speare, History, Literature. You may chance upon 
a book with the very title of your essay. If you do 
hit upon a volume on Shakespeare' s England, you 
will find it almost as great a hindrance as it is a 
help. While it supplies you with a great deal of 
matter, it limits you, because it treats that matter 
in a certain way, and you will find it very difficult 
to avoid adopting the same line of treatment. Many 
writers when dealing with a given subject of a 
literary kind, carefully avoid reading anything that 
is written definitely under the same title. They 
want to be able to deal with the matter freely. You 
must remember that it is a restraint even to have to 
consider how another person has dealt with the 
same matter. 



[212] 



CHAPTER VIII 



LISTENING AND NOTE-MAKING 

GREAT as is the difference, many people do not 
discriminate between hearing and listening. 
To hear is merely to exercise one of our senses, to 
allow certain stimuli to produce a certain reaction 
on the brain with a corresponding effect commonly 
called a state of consciousness. We are intellectually 
passive in the process. Certain sounds appeal to our 
ear, and we may or may not attach a meaning to 
them, but in any case we are not exerting ourselves 
in the matter. In listening all this is changed. We 
hear as before, but we hear with a purpose : we put 
ourselves in the way of hearing: we direct our hear- 
ing. When anything of interest is uttered within 
our hearing, we are said to prick up our ears, which 
is only another way of saying that hearing has 
passed into listening. 

Some people are said to be good listeners, but very 

often they turn out to be nothing more than good 

actors. It is said, by those who know, that a good 

actor is easily detected by the way in which he 

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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

listens on the stage. The poor actor thinks he has 
done his duty when he has said his piece to the best 
of his ability, but the good actor is as keen on his 
work after he has spoken as while he was speaking. 
He is acting all the time. He must not only hear 
what the other actors say, but he must seem to hear. 
He must convey the impression that he is listening. 
A good listener in society often contents himself 
with seeming to listen. The student, however, must 
not only appear to listen, he must really listen. He 
must give his mind to what is being said. 

Even in an ordinary class-lesson, during which 
the teacher does a certain amount of telling, and a 
certain amount of questioning, the pupil must expend 
some energy in listening; but when it comes to what 
is technically known as a lecture, the strain of listen- 
ing is greatly increased. Preaching has been defined 
as "an animated dialogue with one part left out." 
The definition might be passed over to lecturing, 
with perhaps the omission of the word "animated," 
for all lectures cannot claim to have the rousing 
power that ought to be found in all sermons. The 
important thing in dealing with lecturing is to under- 
stand that it implies two aspects, the speaking aspect 
and the listening aspect; and that both aspects are 
active. Lecturing is thus a bi-polar process. But 
so is ordinary teaching. There is always the teach- 
ing pole and the learning pole. But in the ordinary 
class-lesson this polarity is made manifest. There 
is open give and take, overt action and reaction. In 
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A Guide for All Students 

the lecture all the activity appears to be on one side. 
The speaker seems to be doing all the work while the 
audience merely sit passively, and are acted upon. 
But this is only an appearance. So long as the 
audience is listening there is activity. It is true that 
quite a large number of an ordinary audience are 
merely hearing, some of them probably do not even 
hear. But wherever there is intelligent listening 
there is active action and reaction going on between 
the lecturer and his audience. The listeners respond 
to the stimuli supplied by the lecturer. Sometimes 
they agree with him, sometimes they differ from 
him, but always they react in some way or other 
upon what he says. They may be finding illustration 
of the truth of what he is saying, or they may be 
calling up cases that seem to discredit his generaliza- 
tions, but in all cases they are supplying, for them- 
selves, the one part left out. 

Leaving out of account those whose minds are 
wool-gathering, and who therefore do not hear at 
all, and those who merely hear without giving their 
mind to the subject, and dealing only with those 
who are really listening, we find that even with this 
intelligent remnant there is not that steady attention 
that is sometimes supposed. After an hour's lecture 
it is not uncommon to find many who think they 
have been listening steadily all the time. But this 
is not really the case: all listening is intermittent. 
We found that attention is always more or less 
rhythmical in its action. The concentration beat 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

and diffusion beat that we have already considered 
leave their mark on listening. Sometimes the lis- 
tener gives his close attention to the very words 
that are being said ; at others he allows his mind to 
play round what has just been said, neglecting for 
a moment the present words of the lecturer. But 
this is a mark of intelligent attention not inattention. 
In point of fact in listening, as in reading a book 
or in reading music, the mind always goes on a little 
in advance of what the senses present to us. In 
reading aloud we always anticipate what is coming. 
Most intelligent readers have their eyes far ahead 
of the words they are actually uttering at any given 
moment. The skilled musician's eye outruns the 
touch of his ringers on the strings or keys. So in 
listening, the mark of the expert is his power to 
project himself into the mind of the speaker, and 
anticipate what is coming. The really capable lis- 
tener often goes far ahead pf the speaker, and waits 
for him at what may be called the parting of the 
ways in dealing with the subject. "When he comes 
to this point, will he take this direction or that?" 
the trained listener will ask himself. Indeed the 
intelligent listener is asking himself questions all the 
while. His mind is not merely acted upon by the 
stimuli supplied by the speaker: it plays around 
all the ideas presented, and comes to its own con- 
clusions. If you wish to make the best use of 
lectures, you must be prepared to take a very active 
part in the work. 

• [216] 



A Guide for All Students 

Inexperienced listeners often lose a great deal 
of the matter presented to them. In listening to 
an ordinary sermon, for instance, most people carry 
away only isolated parts of the whole. They listen 
in patches, and from what they hear are influenced 
by the power of association, and let their minds 
wander. This seems a little like what we have 
said happens in the case of intelligent listeners, but 
there is this marked difference. In both cases, no 
doubt, the mind is allowed to play round the subject, 
but the intelligent listener limits the attention to 
ideas that are connected with the main subject, while 
the careless listener allows association to carry his 
mind wherever it pleases. Further, the intelligent 
listener, giving his attention to the subject as a 
whole, is able to discriminate, as he goes along, 
which are the really important points and which are 
more or less subordinate. He utilizes the time given 
to subordinate points to make good his mastery of 
the important ones. The unintelligent listener allows 
his mind to wander off, now after important things, 
and again after unimportant, without discriminating 
between them. 

The student's attitude towards a lecture must vary 
according to the nature of the lecture. Broadly 
speaking the lectures to which the student is called 
fall into two classes. They are either inspirational 
or didactic. Some lectures, particularly in litera- 
ture, philosophy and art, are meant mainly to stimu- 
late the mind, to rouse enthusiasm, to guide taste. 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

The communication of knowledge is a subordinate 
end in such lectures. As we have seen in dealing with 
constructive and assimilative study, we can never 
quite dissociate the manipulation of knowledge from 
the acquiring of knowledge. But in inspirational 
lectures the emphasis is on the application and ap- 
preciation of knowledge rather than upon its acqui- 
sition. We learn a great deal from such lectures, 
though not in the form of what may be called new 
facts. 

Take the case of a lecture delivered by Sir Walter 
Raleigh of Oxford on "How to Read Poetry." I 
do not think I ever heard a more useful lecture, and 
yet none of the audience went away with many new 
facts. They did, however, carry away a multitude 
of new impressions. Many of them would certainly 
behave differently with regard to poetry from that 
day forward. I have called the lecture useful be- 
cause I think it could not help producing a practical 
effect on the persons who had intelligence enough to 
understand it. But probably the best term to apply 
to it would be instructive. Very commonly the 
word instruction is used as if it were merely another 
term for the communication of knowledge. But 
literally it means something quite different, and it 
may tend towards clearness if we try to keep the 
literal meaning of the word, though you will re- 
member that it is not commonly used in the sense to 
which I propose to restrict it here. In Latin the 
word instruere means to arrange in proper order, 
[218] 



A Guide for All Students 

and in particular to draw up in order of battle. 
Applied to education, then, the word instruction 
might be wisely limited to the meaning of arranging 
our ideas, putting them in their proper order. By 
their proper order we naturally mean the order that 
is best for the particular purpose we may have in 
view at the time. The teacher who is a good in- 
structor in this sense is the man who has the power 
to arrange all our ideas in the best way to deal with 
the subject he is teaching at the time. He draws up 
our ideas in the order of battle in our struggle to 
acquire knowledge. 

It will be evident that instruction does not neces- 
sarily include the imparting of new facts, though it 
does imply the giving of new points of view. It is 
quite possible to read a book and get from it no new 
separate individual fact, and yet to get up from 
reading it with the justifiable feeling that you have a 
better grip of the things you knew before; that, in 
fact, you have enriched your knowledge, though you 
may not have increased the number of isolated facts 
at your command. 

On one occasion a well-known pleasure steamer 
full of tourists lay off Constantinople for several 
days. After the sightseers had spent some days 
among the interesting places on shore, a distinguished 
literary man among them gave his fellow tourists 
a lecture on Constantinople. His discourse gave 
great satisfaction to the ladies on board, but the men 
were harder to please. There arose a discussion in 
[219] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

the smoking-room, in the course of which it was 
maintained that the lecture did not contain anything 
new. One of those betting men who infest smoking- 
rooms went so far as to make a wager that no one 
could point to any fact in the lecture that was not 
to be found in Baedeker's Guide-Book. The wager 
was taken up, but the unfortunate defender of the 
lecturer was unable to produce a single element that 
the smoking-room people would recognize as a new 
fact. The money was handed over and the smoking- 
room came to the complacent conclusion that the 
lecture was bad — which was where the smoking-room 
was dismally at fault. All the hard facts, no doubt, 
had been forestalled by Baedeker. But the same 
facts made quite a different appearance, and con- 
veyed quite a different impression when they were 
presented in the lecture. As found in the guide- 
book, the facts were dead, inert matter: as they 
came from the mouth of the speaker, they lived and 
palpitated. Further, they were presented in a way 
that gave meaning to the experiences the tourists 
had had during their wanderings through the city. 
They were presented in the order that suited the 
particular occasion: some were emphasized, some 
lightly passed over, so that the whole effect was 
harmonious. As found in the guide-book, the facts 
were all of equal importance: there was no light and 
shade among them: they were the same for the 
whole world. As presented in the lecture, the facts 
were not different from what they were in the book, 
[ 220 ] 



A Guide for All Students 

but they produced a different effect. The lecturer, 
in fact, did not inform his audience, but he did 
instruct them. 

A lecture like this one on Constantinople does not 
bear publication, since its main value was in its 
applicability to the special circumstances of the case. 
Sir Walter Raleigh's lecture is still less fit for pub- 
lication, for quite a different reason. Its value con- 
sisted mainly in the illustrations. By reading poetry 
in wrong ways and in right, he showed how poetry 
should and should not be read. No form of words 
could convey the effect of his voice and manner. 
To illustrate, for example, the fallacy of the popular 
advice of the teacher to the pupil "Read as you 
would speak," he read over with great dignity and 
in a sonorous voice the passage : 

"And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philis- 
tine, he said unto Abner, the captain of the host, Whose son 
is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, 
I cannot tell." 

Then he repeated the passage in a colloquial way, 
jerking his thumb over his shoulder to indicate 
where David was supposed to be. Now the repetition 
of this incident to you has only irritated you. My 
report has not conveyed to you anything like the 
impression that the lecturer did to his audience. 
Your own experience has probably shown you how 
foolish it is to try to make people get enthusiastic 
over a speech that you have heard but they have not. 
[221 ] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

Certain things cannot be communicated by a mere 
report. 

There are, however, other kinds of lectures that 
are quite suited for report. Their main function is 
to communicate or at least to organize knowledge, 
and the facts communicated may be quite well repro- 
duced in black and white for the use of another. 
We are at present, however, more interested in the 
students who themselves attend lectures, and who 
are aware that though they hear a lecture it does 
not follow that they are able to retain all the in- 
formation it supplies. Experiments have been made 
to determine how long the mind can retain on the 
average the new matter that is presented to it. The 
results are rather startling. They are thus expressed 
by a competent psychologist, when speaking of the 
result of the teaching at any class-lesson in the 
ordinary school course : 

"Remember that about half of the new matter presented 
is forgotten after the first half-hour, two-thirds in nine 
hours, three-quarters after six days, and four-fifths after a 
month." 1 

It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that the 
student should make some arrangement by which it 
is possible to revive his impressions. He must make 
some permanent record by means of which he may 
be able to recall at will the important facts com- 
municated by the lecturer. For the genuine student 

1 Felix Arnold, Attention and Interest, p. 242. 
[ 222 ] 



A Guide for All Students 

this matter of making a record of what he hears is 
of the first importance. Dante tells us that — • 

"He listens to some purpose who takes note." 

But to take note is not quite the same thing as 
to take notes. Sometimes, indeed, the two may be 
antagonistic. The need to take notes may prevent 
the student from genuinely taking note. Obviously 
the mere fact that he has to give a certain amount 
of attention to the mechanical process of recording 
what he hears tends to weaken the student's power 
of appreciating its meaning — at any rate, for the 
time. Accordingly it is desirable that we should 
give this matter our serious attention. There are 
various forms of note-taking, and each deserves 
consideration. 

I. There is first of all the verbatim report. To 
adopt this method implies a knowledge of short- 
hand sufficient to write about 130 words a minute. 
Few students possess such skill; so it is comforting 
to reflect that this form of lecture note-taking is 
not necessary, not even desirable. A knowledge of 
shorthand for use in other parts of his work is an 
excellent thing for the student. But those who have 
no skill in shorthand may console themselves by 
remembering that no lecture is worth reproducing 
word for word. If it is so full of matter that every 
individual sentence is essential, then the lecture is 
over-loaded and as a lecture is bad. It ought to 
form a chapter in a textbook. If, on the other hand, 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

the lecture is an inspirational one and depends upon 
its excellent expression, then in its written form it 
will lack that personal vivacity that the lecture- 
room makes possible. In this case the student during 
the delivery would have to miss the thing that gave 
the lecture its main value, in order to be able at his 
leisure afterwards to get its purely secondary value. 
What gives a lecture its importance as compared 
with an essay is that in the lecture we are brought 
into the actual presence of a man who is at home in 
the particular subject that he is dealing with. If we 
spend our whole time, then, in writing down what 
he is saying, we lose the only thing that justifies our 
preferring the lecture to a published work. 

Still it may well be that as a mere matter of com- 
municating knowledge the lecture may occasionally 
occupy a specially commanding position. It may 
contain matter that is not to be obtained elsewhere. 
In this case it is obviously necessary to write down 
this special matter in order to make it our own. 
This, however, is seldom the case nowadays, particu- 
larly in the lectures that students are called upon to 
attend. If a great scholar or savant is giving the 
results of his studies, everybody who attends his 
lecture knows that it will be published almost im- 
mediately, and that in any case a much better report 
will be published in next day's papers than any 
ordinary hearer could make for himself. But it is 
the main business of a lecturer to students to present 
established facts in the most effective way, rather 
[224] 



A Guide for All Students 



than to present facts of which he has the monopoly. 
It is not to be forgotten that lecturers do excellent 
work by presenting facts in the way that is most 
convenient for the particular persons they are ad- 
dressing. All that is said may be found in books, 
but those books may not be readily accessible, and 
in any case young students may not have the time 
to seek out the knowledge that is widely scattered 
over many books. In view of all this, it is clear that 
it is not necessary to write down every word that 
any lecturer says, however distinguished he may be. 
In every lecture there must be a certain amount of 
"padding," that is material to fill up space. This is 
not written by way of complaint. Padding in a 
lecture is as useful and as necessary as connective 
tissue in the human body. It is necessary that the 
various organs of the body should be kept together 
and the interstices decently filled up. Accordingly, 
there is found in the body a certain neutral substance 
known as connective tissue. In its negative way it 
is of vital importance. So in a lecture, the important 
and significant points must be kept in their proper 
relation to one another by an appropriate amount of 
verbal matter that is not in itself of value. In taking 
notes you will find this mental connective tissue an 
excellent thing to omit. 

It has to be remembered that a lecture is not 

merely a chapter from a text-book read aloud to an 

audience. A delivered address differs in kind from a 

printed pamphlet. The very style of the English is 

[225] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

different in the two cases. If you care to look into 
this matter you will easily note the difference. You 
will probably remember from your text-books in 
English that there are two kinds of sentences, the 
loose and the periodic. Experience shows me that 
students, when asked their opinion about which of 
these kinds is the better, vote overwhelmingly in 
favour of the periodic. The name naturally produces 
this result. What can you expect from a sentence 
that is deliberately labelled "loose." And yet there 
is a great deal to be said in favour of this style of 
sentence in lecturing as opposed to writing. If you 
take careful note of the language of your lecturers, 
you will find that the sentences are mostly loose. 

You remember that the loose sentence is one that 
begins in an easy, straightforward way and goes on 
from point to point without elaboration and making 
each clear as it arises. 

If you turn to your Robinson Crusoe you will find 
that it begins: "I was born in the year 1632, in the 
City of York, of a good family, though not of that 
country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, 
who settled first at Hull : he got a good estate by 
merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived after- 
ward at York, from whence he had married my 
mother, whose relations . . ." and so on. Each 
point as it rises explains itself, and there is no 
reason why the sentence should stop at one place 
rather than another, except the consideration of 
length. The periodic sentence, on the other hand, 
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A Guide for All Students 

is so organized that the full meaning cannot be 
known till the end has been reached. All the con- 
ditional clauses are placed first, and it is only at 
the end that the full meaning becomes clear. 

"That St. Paul was struck blind at Damascus, 
that he had to gaze steadfastly in order to distin- 
guish the High Priest, that he wrote to the Galatians 
in large characters, that these same Galatians were 
at one time willing to give even their own eyes for 
him, all lead us to believe that ..." 

Up to this point it is almost impossible to guess 
what the meaning of the whole sentence is. But 
when the words are added : 

". . . St. Paul's 'thorn in the flesh' consisted in 
a weakness of the eyes," we are clear about what the 
author means, whether we agree with him or no. 

Now of the two kinds of sentences it will be ad- 
mitted that the loose is the better for the purposes 
of the lecturer. The periodic sentence is quite ad- 
missible in print, for the reader may turn back to 
the beginning of the sentence and see whether the 
arguments there offered justify the conclusion 
reached. But the mere listener is not in this position. 
If a long sentence depends for its ultimate meaning 
upon the last clause, it is plain that the listener is 
placed at a great disadvantage. You will not make 
the mistake of thinking that all this forms a plea 
for careless composition in a lecture. All that is 
claimed is that the composition of a lecture should 
be different in kind from that of a printed essay. 
[227] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

So with the arrangement of matter. Certain things 
are permissible in a lecture that would be out of 
place in a book. For example, not" only is a certain 
amount of repetition not objectionable in a lecture, 
it is positively desirable. This does not mean mere 
verbal repetition, but repetition of the same matter in 
a slightly different form. Necessary as are these repe- 
titions, they need not appear in the student's notes. 
II. The second kind of note-taking is, if anything, 
worse than the verbatim form. It consists in writing 
out as much of the lecture as the student can manage 
to get down in longhand. This really is an attempt 
to treat the lecture as a sort of dictation lesson. The 
question was, indeed, seriously discussed long ago 
among the Jesuits — who are noted for their skill as 
teachers — whether lecturing should be so carried on 
that every word of the lecturer could be taken down 
in longhand. The result of the discussion was that 
dictation, for they recognized that this was what the 
proposal amounted to, was rejected as uneducational. 
A compromise between the verbatim and the dicta- 
tion method is sometimes adopted by professors, who 
insist upon their students really listening to them 
while lecturing, but who make up for the prohibition 
of note-taking during the delivery of the lecture by 
pausing every ten minutes or so and dictating a 
short paragraph containing the substance of what 
has been said. If you care to turn to Sir William 
Hamilton's published lectures, you will find these 
dictated passages marked by a little circle. If you 
[ 228 ] 



A Guide for All Students 

read over the lecture first and then read over the 
dictated paragraphs consecutively, you will find that 
these paragraphs contain the essence of the whole 
lecture. 

What weighs a good deal with students in their 
attempts to get as much of the very words of the 
lecture as they can, is that in many cases the lecturer 
is also the examiner in the subject, and there is an 
ineradicable belief among students that the lecturer 
always likes to get back his own words. You may 
rest assured that the belief is unfounded. Even the 
most conceited lecturer soon tires of his own words 
frequently repeated. You will fare much better at 
your examination if you rely upon mastering the 
meaning, and clothing it in your own language. The 
inevitable result of the desire to write down the 
bulk of the lecture is that the students lose the mean- 
ing of the lecture as a whole. In the pursuit of the 
shadow they lose the substance. They are kept so 
busy writing down the mere words that they have 
no time to give to the sense. Further, the hand- 
writing degenerates under the strain, with the result 
that the students first of all spend the whole lecture 
hour merely scribbling down as much as they can, 
then they have to waste a great deal of time de- 
ciphering the very words they have written, and 
finally they have to enter upon a struggle to get some 
meaning out of the whole. 

III. Accordingly, there is a natural tendency to 
adopt the third kind of note-taking, which has at 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

least the great advantage that it permits of intel- 
ligent listening. This consists in writing down 
nothing but striking facts or expressions, whatever, 
in short, appeals to the student as worthy of special 
notice. In a didactic lecture, for example, a great 
many individual facts are usually given, and many 
of these are worth noting at once, since the facts 
are useful in themselves, and can be jotted down 
without undue expenditure of time and without dis- 
tracting attention from the main subject of the 
lecture. But sometimes a series of facts or figures 
is given, not for the value of any single fact or figure, 
but for the cumulative effect of the whole. To 
prove that a particular act of legislation produced 
a certain definite effect on a particular industry, the 
lecturer may quote lists of annual returns. These 
make their proper effect, but it is not necessary for 
the student to get them all down in his notebook. 
It is enough if he notes the general statement to be 
proved and the source from which the quoted figures 
are derived. The skilful lecturer strives to put in a 
tabular form all the information that he wishes his 
students to take down. This he puts upon the 
blackboard, and it is for the student to determine — if 
the lecturer gives no hint — whether the table is worth 
reproducing in the notebook or not. As a rule the 
lecturer makes an allowance of time for taking down 
such tables as he considers necessary. 

The tendency of this form of note-taking is to be 
quite unsystematic. All that it does is to save cer- 
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A Guide for All Students 

tain facts from the wreckage, and to leave certain 
marks by which lost treasure may be recovered. 
Very often these marks need not be at all elaborate. 
A single word may be sufficient to recall and elabo- 
rate illustrations that in their original form took 
quite a while to work out. This was the method 
adopted long ago in reporting the speeches made in 
the House of Commons when it was not permitted 
to make notes on the spot Those whose business 
it was to give an account of what took place in 
Parliament made some surreptitious notes of striking 
points, and then went home and worked up the 
speech again from memory as well as they could. 
Something of the same kind must be done by the 
student, for unless the notes are worked up into a 
reasonably intelligible shape they soon cease to have 
any value at all. At the time, they have a sugges- 
tive value : the mind is able at once to respond to all 
the suggestions of each of the scanty notes, but 
after the interval of a day or two they lose this power 
and become nothing more than a means of tantaliz- 
ing the student, who knows that they used to have a 
meaning, but is now unable to recall what it is. 

Accordingly there is urgent need for the student 
who has taken notes of this kind to elaborate them 
as soon as possible. This is usually called "writing 
up" the notes, and often entails a heavy expenditure 
of time. Since the notes are necessarily not self- 
interpretive, if they are left over for a day or two 
the result is disastrous. Even when the notes are 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

fairly intelligible in themselves, it is always desir- 
able to expand some of them, and to supply connect- 
ing links here and there, so as to make quite sure 
that there will be no misunderstanding of their 
meaning in the future. There is the additional 
advantage that the mere fact of revising the notes 
revives the impressions made during the lecture, 
and therefore strengthens the mind's grip upon them. 
IV. Many lectures, however, are not made up of 
mere statements of fact that can be recorded in the 
straightforward way we have been considering. 
They demand consecutive thinking throughout the 
whole period devoted to them. This is the kind of 
lecture that demands serious attention during its 
actual delivery. The student must listen to it as it 
comes from the lecturer's lips, or it is useless at the 
time, and beyond the power of recall at a later stage. 
The style of notes that such a lecture demands is 
what may be called the skeleton outline. There is 
no time for writing out complete sentences if the 
student is to keep on following the speaker's thought, 
and yet there are usually very few catchwords, or 
definite concrete facts to seize upon as guides. On 
the other hand, such lectures are usually prepared 
with considerable care, and therefore follow a defi- 
nite plan. Sometimes the lecturer is good enough to 
explain this plan. He tells the audience at the begin- 
ning exactly what he proposes to do, and then pro- 
ceeds to do it. He tells them, for example, that he 
intends to deal with his subject under the following 
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A Guide for All Students 

heads, which he then proceeds to state. Sometimes 
he goes further and supplies sub-heads. There is, 
of course, danger here of the lecturer becoming 
pedantic and paying more attention to classification 
than to the essentials dealt with. But this is the 
lecturer's look out. It is the business of the student 
to take down all the heads that are supplied, and to 
fill in under each head as many sub-heads as he 
thinks are implied in the treatment. Frequently, 
however, lecturers prefer to keep their classification 
to themselves. They, of course, have the necessary 
heads and sub-heads, but they think it inartistic to 
proclaim them. In this case it is the student's busi- 
ness to unearth the heads for himself. 

To do this successfully demands a good deal of 
practice, but it is practice that well repays the time 
spent upon it, since it really implies a training in 
logical analysis. A student who can make up a 
fairly accurate analytical classification of the matters 
dealt with in a lecture has proved himself a master 
in his craft. To acquire this skill, however, the 
prudent student will begin outside the lecture-room. 
He cannot afford to muddle important lectures in his 
early attempts. As we learn shooting by beginning 
with a fixed mark and then passing on to flying 
objects, so we should begin our analytical note- 
making with a printed lecture, and pass on to a 
spoken one only after skill has been acquired in 
dealing with the more amenable printed form. You 
cannot do better than begin by reading over the 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

printed lectures of some master of the craft, and 
then making from the text a set of heads and sub- 
heads. Take, for example, a series of lectures on 
art that Ruskin once delivered to his students at 
Oxford. These are now published in the form of a 
book under the title of The Eagle's Nest. They are 
specially useful for your purpose, since they are 
very well arranged, rather short (they are some- 
what abbreviated from the form in which they were 
actually delivered), contain suggestions of classi- 
fication, and are in themselves very interesting. 
Some of Huxley's popular lectures, such as those on 
"Coal" and "A Piece of Chalk," will form 
thoroughly good matter for further practice. In 
order that you may understand precisely the sort of 
thing that is wanted, I supply at the end of this 
chapter an analysis of the kind I mean, made from 
Chapter IV of this book. You should turn back 
to Chapter IV and reread it, making such notes as 
you think necessary, then turn to the analysis and 
compare what you have done with what you find 
there. 

After you have done some of Ruskin's lectures 
and some of Huxley's — or some other lectures that 
you may have by you, for it is not necessary to 
have the special lectures mentioned above — you will 
find yourself beginning to understand the sort of 
thing to look for in a lecture or article. You will 
soon be able to determine whether a lecture is well 
organized or not. For you will not infrequently 
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A Guide for All Students 

find that it is impossible to discover suitable heads 
and sub-heads, for the excellent reason that there 
are none to discover. After this practice with 
printed matter, you will find yourself in a much 
better position to deal with an ordinary lecture 
delivered to a real audience. 

The advantage of setting about finding the appro- 
priate headings is that it puts you in the most 
favourable position for listening to the lecture. You 
come to it with your mind prepared. There are 
certain questions that you want answered. Know- 
ing the nature of the subject, you wonder whether 
the lecturer will take it in this way or in that. You 
may know nothing at all about the details of the 
subject, and yet coming prepared in a general way 
for the subject, you are in a position to fit in each 
of the facts presented into its proper place in rela- 
tion to other facts and to the subject as a whole. 
It is the business of the lecturer to put himself in the 
place of his audience and present his facts in such a 
way as to meet the special needs of the audience here 
and now before him. But his work is ever so much 
more effective if his audience meet him half-way. 
To get the full benefit of a lecture the hearer must 
bestir himself, and must feel responsible for at least 
half of the activity going on. 

It is sometimes said that at the end of a well 
delivered and well listened-to lecture the audience 
should have in their minds exactly the mental con- 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

tent on the subject that was in the mind of the 
lecturer just before the lecture. The same view is 
sometimes expressed by saying that at the end of 
a well delivered lecture the notes in the pupil's note- 
books should coincide with the notes on the lecturer's 
sheets. But this does not by any means follow. 
The lecturer uses his notes for a purpose quite other 
than that of the listener. He may put down a great 
many facts that are of value as illustrations and yet 
are not worthy to be copied down by the students. 
The lecturer, for example, may in his notes write out 
in full a long quotation from some authority. Merely 
to refer to the authority and explain in a general 
way what the authority thinks of the question is 
not enough. A paraphrase does not satisfy: the 
very words are essential. On the other hand, the 
student may dismiss this with a mere note of the 
name of the authority, the reference to where the 
words are to be found, and perhaps a phrase indicat- 
ing the kind of evidence contained in the passage. 
The lecturer may have a large page of manuscript 
taken up with a passage from J. S. Mill, while the 
student may merely write the words : "Mill's Logic, 
Bk. I, chap. v. §4 Ethology = Science of Char- 
acter." 

In other cases the balance will be readjusted, for 
a mere word or two may be enough to suggest to 
the lecturer what has to be said upon some aspect 
of the subject with which he is very familiar while 
for the sake of his future comfort the student will 
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A Guide for All Students 

be wise to jot down several phrases. In fact, the 
notes of the lecturer are modified by his special 
knowledge of the subject, the special needs of the 
particular class he is dealing with at the time, and 
also by the personal peculiarities of the lecturer 
himself. In the same way the students have each 
a personality that will be reflected in the kind of 
notes taken. Even in a well arranged class there 
are great differences among the students with regard 
to their previous knowledge of the subject, to say 
nothing of their personal peculiarities. All these 
may and should be reflected in the notes. Yet when 
all allowance has been made for the expression of 
peculiarities, there must be a fundamental residuum 
of likeness in all the notes that are well made. 
There is a sort of lowest common denominator that 
should be implicit in every set of notes. The essen- 
tial points should be present in each and in the 
same order. A skilful person, familiar with the 
subject matter, from an examination of any three 
sets of satisfactory notes on a given lecture should 
be able to reconstruct that lecture very much as it 
was delivered. For the student it will be enough to 
be able to reproduce the lecture as it affected him. 

ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER IV 

I. The Two Kinds of Study — assimilative and constructive. 

A. Relation of student to his surroundings. 
o. Absorbing and being absorbed by them. 
b. Result of reaction : being at home in his surround- 
ings. 

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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

B. Turning fact into faculty. 

a. Knowledge as impression and as expression. 

i. Static — mental content (making outer inner), 
ii. Dynamic — mental activity (making inner 
outer). 

b. Relativity of value of facts. 

C. Acquisitive study — depending largely upon memory. 

D. Constructive study — involving some form of reasoning. 

a. Manipulation of Knowledge, and application to 

new cases. 

b. Apperception. 

i. Power of mental content. 

ii. Assimilation instead of Acquisition. 

E. Necessary interpenetration of the two methods of 
study. 

a. In Assimilation reason must play at least a small 

part. 

b. In Construction we must acquire some new knowl- 

edge. 

F. Preferences of students. 

a. Commonplace students — assimilative. 

b. Students with initiative — constructive. 

II. The Building up of Knowledge. 

A. Realm of the Uncertain: Guessing and its bad repu- 
tation. 

B. Realm of the Certain. 

a. The Laws of Thought as Thought. 

i. Identity. 

ii. Non-Contradiction. 

iii. Excluded Middle. 

b. Conditions of uniform result of honest thinking. 

i. Adequate knowledge. 
ii. Absence of bias. 
iii. Application of the mind. 
[2 3 8] 



A Guide for All Students 

C. The Realm of Guesswork. 

a. Random Shots. 

b. Relation to hypothesis. 

D. Practical Thinking. 

a. The two main kinds of Reasoning. 

i. Deductive (true of class, true of individual). 

1. Cause of certainty of results. 

2. Advantages of the method. 

ii. Inductive (Uniformity of Nature). 

1. Cause of uncertainty of results. 

2. Advantages of method. 

b. Progress in Premiss-making or Premiss-finding. 

i. Number of cases to secure sound induction. 

Value and dangers of general rules. 
ii. Natural connexions involved in cases. 

Nature and use of Analogy. 

III. Applications of Thought. 

A. Fitting of means to ends on ideational plane. 

B. Fumbling and pictorial Thinking. 

C. The place and importance of therefore. 



[239] 



CHAPTER IX 



CONSTRUCTIVE STUDY IN TRANSLA- 
TION AND ESSAY-WRITING 

ONE of the best examples of the working of 
constructive study is to be found in the 
translation into English of passages from a foreign 
language. This always presupposes a great deal of 
acquired knowledge and skill, and exemplifies their 
application to a specific problem. If the pupil had 
to find out afresh the meaning of all the words in 
such a passage, he would have little chance of ever 
making sense out of it. At the same time, the 
ordinary student always does find in the work of 
translation some words with which he is not familiar 
or which he has never seen before; and the looking 
up of these in the dictionary gives that supply of 
new matter that nearly always accompanies con- 
structive work. Each new passage is necessarily a 
problem, sometimes easy of solution, sometimes very 
difficult; occasionally, indeed, with the student's 
limited knowledge, insoluble. 

One of the most useful forms in which construc- 
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A Guide for All Students 

tive exercise occurs in school and college, and par- 
ticularly at examinations, is the translation of what 
are usually called "unseens." This means that a 
passage that the student has not seen before is set 
for translation under conditions that prevent him 
from consulting a dictionary or any other book 
that might give him help in the process. Sometimes 
this exercise is called translation "at sight." As 
almost every student, at some time or other in his 
progress, has to face a paper of this kind, it is well 
to give a few hints on the whole matter, and to supply 
an illustration of how these hints may be applied. 

To begin with, you must start with the assump- 
tion that the passage has a meaning : a quite definite 
meaning. Accordingly, if what you make of it 
does not seem sense, then you may be quite sure 
that you are wrong. There may be a possibility of 
making more than one meaning out of the passage, 
and you may not be always sure which meaning is 
the true one, but if you find that what you have 
written has no meaning at all, then you may rest 
assured that you have failed. Your first principle, 
then, must be to make a meaning out of what is 
presented to you. When you have a choice of 
meanings, you must see to it that you take into 
account the whole passage. You must do your 
best to give to each word the meaning that you 
have learnt it usually bears, but you ought to make 
it a principle that the general consistency of the 
whole passage is a more important indication of 
[241 ] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

the meaning of a word or phrase than what you 
can remember from your dictionary or your gram- 
mar book. 

The question is sometimes asked, which is to be 
preferred, a free translation or a literal one? By 
a free translation is usually meant a rendering into 
good, flowing, idiomatic English of the meaning of 
the person who wrote the passage. The aim is to 
convey to the English reader the same impression 
as the foreign writer conveyed to his original 
readers. Thus we would not render the Latin words 
quisque optimus miles by the literal every best soldier, 
but by the ordinary English all the best soldiers. 
In his orations Cicero addresses certain persons 
whom he calls judices; this being literally inter- 
preted would read judges, but this word would con- 
vey a wrong meaning to an ordinary English reader, 
accordingly many scholars would prefer to render 
it "gentlemen of the jury," though the system of 
trial by jury was not known among the Romans in 
the form it has taken among us. Er steht unter dem 
Panto ff el, in German, means literally he stands under 
the slipper: but this is meaningless to an English 
reader, who quite understands it, however, when it 
is rendered he is henpecked. 

Generally speaking, then, the free translation is 
to be preferred where there is no doubt whatever 
as to the exact meaning that the original author 
desired to convey. Sometimes, however, there may 
be a difficulty in determining whether the author 
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A Guide for All Students 

meant what he appears to mean, and in these cases 
the passage is usually translated literally. When 
you find a foreign author quoted in translation in 
the course of an article in English, you will some- 
times find that some particular English expression 
is followed within brackets by the very words of 
the foreign language. The meaning of this is that 
the English author wants to give his readers the 
assurance that he is not unfairly representing the 
meaning of the author he is quoting in translation. 

But in translating as an exercise other points have 
to be kept in view, Sometimes a teacher insists 
upon a rigidly literal rendering of a passage, in 
order to make quite sure that the student really 
does know word by word what the author wrote. 
For a clever writer of English it is not very difficult 
to gather the general sense of a passage and then 
turn out an elegant English paragraph or two ex- 
pressing in a broad way what the author meant. 
The result is rather a paraphrase of the original 
than a translation of it. So long as you really 
know pretty accurately the exact meaning of the 
passage, you are entitled to take a certain amount 
of liberty in the interests of good English. Speak- 
ing generally, younger students are encouraged to 
give a fairly literal rendering of a passage, while 
more advanced students are allowed greater freedom. 

It may help you to understand the proper point of 
view to remember the instructions of a distinguished 
classical scholar to the assistant who was to mark 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

the class examination papers. "Mark the scholar- 
ship papers first, and when a candidate shows an 
accurate knowledge of the details of the language, 
allow him great scope in his translation. If he is 
weak in his scholarship, do not give him the benefit 
of the doubt where his translation is free." If at 
an examination you are in doubt whether the ex- 
aminer will give you credit for a particularly free 
translation, it is an excellent plan to put in now 
and again, within brackets, the literal rendering of 
a phrase that you have taken liberties with. If 
one had time, an absolutely literal translation fol- 
lowed by a free English rendering would remove 
all doubt, but in most examinations time permits of 
only a compromise. 

Some general considerations may be suggested in 
the matter of translation at sight, particularly at 
examinations. 

( i ) Make the sentence, not the word, the unit of 
your translations. Do not try to remember specifi- 
cally all the meanings of individual words as found 
in the dictionary. Let the context decide the mean- 
ing to be borne in a particular passage. 

(2) When you have discovered the general mean- 
ing of a sentence, you may still be unaware of the 
exact meaning of some of the words. In this case 
adopt the most general meaning that will safely 
fill in the sense. If, for example, you gather that 
a man moved from one place to another, but you 
do not know from the verb whether he walked, or 
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A Guide for All Students 

ran, or drove, or rode, or rowed, or sailed, or swam, 
say simply that he proceeded there. If we give 
Ccesar proceeded to Rome as a translation for 
Romam Ccesar properavit, we do not get such high 
marks as if we had known that pro per o implies 
haste; but we would get more than if we had par- 
ticularized and said he sailed. He may or he may 
not have sailed, he certainly did proceed. 

(3) On the other hand, wherever you are sure 
about any detail, do not generalize unless the genius 
of the language demands it. You are aware that 
Latin, as a whole, prefers the concrete, and English 
the abstract. But while in translating English into 
Latin it is essential to keep this in view in order 
to give the proper colouring to your Latin version, 
it is not so necessary to make the English abstract. 
We know from our own experience whether our 
translation reads like English or not, so we need 
not follow abstract rules in the matter; and in point 
of fact, a concrete expression in English where an 
abstract one is more usual, really adds piquancy to 
the style, and at the same time guarantees your 
acquaintance with the literal meaning of the word 
translated. By a comforting law of compensation, 
you will find that the tendency to generalize arising 
out of your ignorance of the meaning of specific 
terms, will always supply your English version with 
its proper bias towards the abstract. 

(4) Sometimes you will come across technical 
expressions and peculiar turns indicated by little 

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Making the Most of One s Mind 

words. If these are marked off by commas, and 
convey to you no sense, while you can make sense 
quite well without them, your plan is to ignore 
them altogether. Take such a case as bien entendu 
in French, or 'mal in German. They do give a 
flavour to the sentence in which they occur, and in 
a fine translation that flavour must be rendered, but 
in an ordinary translation they may be left out with- 
out materially altering the meaning. If you remem- 
ber that mal in German means time in the sense of 
repetition, as in zweima/ meaning two times, you 
will be very ill advised to thrust in the word time, 
where the word 'mal occurs. Unless you know the 
exact flavour it ought to give to the sentence, your 
only safe plan is to take no notice of it. 

To give point to what we have said about trans- 
lation at sight as a constructive study I submit an 
example. The passage is in French, as that seems 
to be the language within the range of the greatest 
number of readers. The principles can be as well 
illustrated by one language as by another, so those 
who do not happen to have studied French will at 
anyrate have the satisfaction that fewer people will 
be disappointed than if any other language had been 
chosen. 

I have set the passage that follows to several 

large classes of students, so that I have had several 

hundred versions submitted by pupils at different 

stages of advancement. In the comments that I 

[246] 



A Guide for All Students 

make upon it, I have, therefore, had the advantage 
of the actual experience of those who have faced 
it as an unseen. Some of the mistakes the students 
made seem to mark a very low grade of knowledge 
and even intelligence. Yet no one who has had 
much experience in marking unseens will be greatly 
surprised at anything that occurs in such papers. 
Besides, the more glaring the blunders, the more 
strikingly will they serve as beacons of warning. 

M. Jolivet est 1'homme habitue a fouler l'asphalte du 
boulevard. Vous le voyez campe d'un air crane, comme s'il 
devait tout subjuguer. Au fond, c'est un bon enfant. . II se 
fourre toujours dans des aventures hasardeuses dont, 
heureusement pour lui, son esprit et sa bonne humeur 
parviennent toujours a le tirer. L'autre, M. Blount, le 
reporter anglais, juche gravement sur son ane, egalement 
arme jusqu'aux dents, empresse a. devancer son rival en 
cancans politiques, lui tend des pieges pour empecher d'arriver 
bon premier. 

La chance les favorise tour a tour, ainsi que vous pourrez 
en juger par vous-memes, mes chers amis, du moins je 
l'espere pour quelques uns d'entre vous. Vous decrire les 
ballets, les retraites aux flambeaux, les panoramas qui se 
succedent, me serait impossible, ce sont des merveilles qu'il 
faut voir et qui tiennent si peu a Taction qu'on pourrait les 
montrer a part. 

After reading the whole passage rapidly you 
gather that it is about two men whose names are 
Blount and Jolivet, the first being an English re- 
porter, and though nothing is said about Jolivet's 
profession, we are entitled to infer that he too is a 
reporter, since he is Blount's rival. The second 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

paragraph is obviously about wonderful sights that 
the two reporters have had to do with, but probably 
the most characteristic point about this paragraph 
at the first glance is its unintelligibility. 

Going back to the first paragraph we may assume 
that the average student does not know the mean- 
ing of the infinite fouler. Assuming that you are 
the average student, you would certainly know the 
meaning of asphalte, and you would have the idea 
that boulevard was some sort of street, and this is 
confirmed by the connexion between asphalte and 
boulevard. Jolivet is accustomed to do something 
to the asphalt of the street. Had we not known his 
profession we might have been much in doubt about 
fouler, for there are a great many things that work- 
men can do to the asphalt. But in the case of a 
reporter, it is a perfectly legitimate guess that tread 
is the meaning of fouler, since that is about the only 
thing a reporter habitually does to asphalt. In the 
second sentence the words campe and crane are the 
only two that are a little unfriendly. A man does 
something with a certain kind of air, and since he 
looks as if he ought to conquer everything, we may 
make a fair guess that it was a haughty air; the 
intelligent student might even pass from crdne= 
cranium or skull to the notion of swelled head, and 
translate it by swaggering: then taking the literal 
meaning of campe as camped, we may change it into 
the more general form placed or planted. You see 
him placed with haughty air is not very far from 
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A Guide for All Students 

the truth, and would get some marks, though you 
see him standing there with a swaggering air might 
get more. Au fond means at bottom and is one of 
those isolated phrases that are unsafe to guess. If 
you do not know it, therefore, you had better leave 
it out altogether. Since it stands by itself it gets 
no help from the context, but as a compensation it 
Can be omitted without attracting undue attention. 
In writing out your translation, give no indication 
that a word has been omitted. Some teachers insist 
upon their pupils always leaving a blank in every 
case where a word has not been translated. This is 
an excellent plan to help the teacher in his marking 
of exercises, but it is not to be recommended when 
you are working an examination paper. 

In the next sentence, aventures hasardeuses indi- 
cates .that he got into trouble, but heureusement and 
bonne humeur suggest that things ended well, which 
is precisely the meaning of the sentence. He always 
got into perilous adventures would do, though he is 
continually thrusting himself into is more true to 
the original. Juche is the first trouble in the next 
sentence; it is something passive, as we learn from 
its form. Now the most likely thing for an English- 
man to do gravely on the back of an ass is to sit. 
Seated would therefore do, though perched is better. 
The rest is complicated. You have to consider what 
you think an English reporter armed to the teeth 
and perched on an ass is likely to do to a rival. 
There is a natural tendency to translate empresse by 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

pressed, and though this is not the true meaning, it 
gives a certain amount of sense. It is best rendered 
eager', then the next problem is what he was eager 
to do to his rival. Obviously not to help. Devancer 
suggests getting in front of, and therefore anticipat- 
ing the rival, in the matter of cancans. From the 
context this last word may be fairly guessed to be 
news, since that is what reporters are most keen to 
anticipate each other in. As a matter of fact, the 
word is contemptuous, and is best rendered by tittle- 
tattle, but the more general word will carry you 
through. You may not remember that the word 
piege means a snare or a trap, but you easily guess 
that it is something to prevent his rival from making 
a good first. The sentence presents no difficulties in 
making a literal translation ; the last clause might run 
at least I hope it for some among you, though it 
would run better at least I hope so in the case of 
some of you. 

The last sentence of all is one of those in which the 
student is sometimes able to give the literal meaning 
of every word, and yet unable to make sense of the 
whole. It is difficult to believe how often such a 
sentence is rendered unintelligible by the remark- 
able blunder of making the first vous the subject 
of the verb describe. Once the student begins the 
sentence with "You describe" no sense can be made 
out of all that follows. In an apparently meaning- 
less sentence like this it is often advisable to write 
out the whole in bald English as a mere literal ren- 
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A Guide for All Students 

dering of the words. Thus we would have "You to 
describe the ballets, the retreats to the torches, the 
panoramas that succeed themselves me would be 
impossible; they are of the marvels which it is 
necessary to see, and which hold so little to the 
action that one could show them apart." By apply- 
ing common sense to this hash of clumsy English it 
is possible to get a meaning that is not very far from 
the original: "It would be impossible for me to 
describe to you the ballets, the torchlight processions, 
the panoramas succeeding each other ; they are won- 
ders that must be seen [to be believed or to be 
realized], and have so little to do with the action 
that they might be shown by themselves." This 
implies that they have so little to do with the action 
of the story being told by the author, that they 
might be presented as things by themselves. 

Essay-Writing. 

To know is one thing, to express our knowledge 
is another. Yet the two are inseparably connected. 
We never really know what we cannot in some way 
or other express. In fact, psychologists have a way 
of saying that there is no impression without expres- 
sion. You experience the truth of the intimate con- 
nexion between knowledge and its expression every 
time that you seek to put down on paper what you 
think you know. So long as the matter was left 
merely floating about in the mind we could satisfy 
ourselves that we knew it, but so soon as we proceed 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

to write it down we find certain gaps of which we 
were before unconscious. But not only does writing 
discover these disconcerting gaps, but it makes us 
realize that we have not any carefully arranged plan 
of relating our ideas to one another. Before we 
can set out our knowledge clearly on paper we must 
have first arranged it carefully in our minds. It is 
for this reason that essay-writing justly occupies such 
an important place in school and college work. No- 
where can we find a better example of constructive 
study than in the case of a student sitting down to 
write an essay. For every essay to be written in- 
volves a problem, and a two-fold problem at that. 
Given the subject, the student has to set about finding 
things to say about it, and at the same time he has 
to consider how best to say them. 

You are likely to find the double problem of the 
essay very discouraging. It is always difficult to 
do two things at once. You are so apt to become 
absorbed in one at the expense of the other. The 
tendency of teachers at school is to emphasize the 
composition side at the cost of the subject matter. 
On the other hand, the pupils who have the actual 
essay to write nearly always feel the pinch mainly 
in connexion with the matter. They are apt to 
think that if only they knew what to say they would 
have no difficulty in saying it. In school essay 
writing the pupil is too frequently put in the worst 
possible position for doing his work. A very wise 
and experienced teacher once made the suggestive 
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A Guide for All Students 

remark, ''There is a world of difference between 
having to say something, and having something to 
say." Too frequently the pupil in school is put into 
the position of having to say something. This is a 
distressing position and is apt to paralyse him. The 
skilful teacher will do everything in his power to 
put matters in such a way that the pupil knows cer- 
tain things, and is expected to give his views on them. 
If this is accomplished the pupil is put in the envi- 
able position of having something that he wants to 
say. 

You will see, then, that it is a mistake to separate 
matter from its expression. There is nothing more 
dreary than writing merely for the sake of writing. 
The mere word-monger is apt to become dull and 
pedantic, while the mere fact-monger is apt to lose 
the power of clear and accurate expression. This 
is curiously illustrated by a quarrel that is going on 
in America as I write, among the teachers of the 
secondary and technical schools. The teachers are 
divided into the two camps, the teachers of English 
on the one hand, and the teachers of all the remain- 
ing subjects on the other. It appears that the non- 
English teachers, especially the teachers of science, 
are finding that their pupils are unable to express 
themselves. These pupils have stopped their English 
course at an early stage, and have given all their 
time to their other studies, and now it is complained 
that they have lost their power of expression. The 
remedy the non-English teachers propose is that all 
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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

exercises in every subject shall be treated also as 
exercises in English composition, and marked ac- 
cordingly by the teachers of English. The plan is 
regarded by the English teachers as an. excellent one, 
if only the other teachers will do the marking: they 
decline to be made the mere assistants of the non- 
English teachers. Thus the quarrel stands: for us 
the lesson is obvious. We must not separate subject 
matter from its expression, and the essay is the best 
form in which the two may be usefully combined. 

Some essays require very little preparation in the 
way of supplying subject matter. They demand 
nothing more than the writer's personal reaction to 
certain suggested particulars. If you are asked to 
write on such a subject as "My Favourite Poem," 
all you have to do is to make up your mind rapidly 
which poem you like best, and then describe it and 
explain as well as you can why it is that you do 
like it. You have all the materials, as it were, on 
the premises, and your work lies in making a wise 
choice among them. Such essays as those of Lamb 
belong to this class. No doubt many of them con- 
tain a fair amount of rather peculiar knowledge used 
by way of illustration; but we feel that Lamb did 
not go out of his way to acquire this knowledge for 
the special purpose of his essay. He draws upon the 
stores of his memory and experience, but the main 
value of his work is his personal reaction to the 
matters he is dealing with. The same is true of 
practically all the work of those who are known 
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A Guide for All Students 

collectively as the English Essayists — Addison, 
Steele, Goldsmith, Johnson, Foster, and the rest. 

But in school and college work there is a sort of 
didactic essay frequently prescribed, the purpose of 
which is partly to give practice in composition and 
partly to encourage the pupil to acquire general 
knowledge, and consolidate by revision knowledge 
he has already acquired. For example, junior pupils 
may be called upon to write upon Money Orders. 
This means that they have to acquire somehow or 
other a knowledge of what a money order is, how it 
is used, and any other particulars they think it 
worth while to learn and communicate. In higher 
classes subjects of a more complicated kind are 
set. The Origin of the Cabinet is really an exer- 
cise in History, The Panama Canal in Geography, 
The Fools of 'Shakespeare in Literature, The Fer- 
tilization of Plants in Botany. 

In all these cases there is no mystery in the 
matter. Everything is plain and straightforward. 
You know exactly where to go for the information 
you require. You are told how long the essay is to 
be, and all you have to do is to proceed to grind 
out the required amount. Your personality does 
not count for very much in such subjects, but it is 
never negligible. In dealing with Shakespeare's 
Fools, for example, you cannot avoid giving your 
personal reactions, even though you may find all 
the essential points of orthodox opinion ready-made 
in your text book. But in the other subjects men- 
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Making the Most of One s Mind 

tioned there is less room for your personality. The 
Cabinet and the Canal certainly give a little opening 
for your political views, but the Fertilization of 
Plants is rather damping to personal reaction. 
Essays of this kind are merely class exercises of a 
somewhat elaborate nature. They are more like 
formal accounts of acquired knowledge, and it is 
interesting to find that in the American universities 
professors and students are beginning to speak of 
reports where we would speak of essays. These 
reports are always understood to imply a certain 
amount of definite reading, the results of which are 
incorporated : in some cases, indeed, the report takes 
the specific form of a synopsis of the student's 
reading. 

Obviously certain subjects lend themselves to 
treatment on either the personal or the report method. 
Suppose, for example, the subject of Dreams is set. 
You may fairly fall back entirely upon your own 
experience, describe the dreams you and your friends 
have had, give your memories of classical dreams, 
and your impressions of what they are all worth. 
You may bring in Joseph, Scipio, and as many more 
as you can remember, and yet your essay is purely 
your personal reaction to the subject. On the other 
hand, you may make a preliminary investigation into 
the matter, finding out what scientific writers have 
said on the subject, quoting your authorities and 
coming to some general conclusion about the nature 
and meaning of dreams. Of the first kind, Robert 
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A Guide for All Students 

Louis Stevenson's essay on the subject may be 
taken as an example. Of the other kind, there is 
no short example, since people do not publish es- 
says of the report type. They are mere exercises, 
valuable for the training they give, not for the work 
produced. 

A third kind of essay to some extent combines 
the elements of the first two. This may be called 
the dialectic or argumentative kind. It consists in 
the discussion of a question to which there are two 
opposing answers. Stock subjects of this kind are : 
Was the English Conquest of India Justifiable? 
Should Women have the Vote ? Is Mars Inhabited ? 
Sometimes the problem is not stated in the form of 
a question, but the question is implied all the same. 
If we have the subject of The Character of Crom- 
well, or The Political Work of Abraham Lincoln 
submitted for treatment, we know that there is the 
implied challenge of another side, whichever view 
we take up. In all essays of the dialectic type the 
personal element enters largely, but the research ele- 
ment is not to be eliminated. Whichever view we 
adopt, we have to collect arguments in favour of it 
and against its opposite. It is curious to note how 
students naturally divide themselves into two classes 
according as the research element or the personal 
predominates. The great majority are under the 
influence of the personal element. The common case 
is that of the student who looks at the question for 
a few minutes, makes up his mind which side he is 
[257] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

on, and then proceeds to hunt for arguments for 
that side. This is quite a good way of going to 
work so far as the mere exercise in composition 
and writing is concerned. It is further an excellent 
training in advocacy. From this point of view it is 
not infrequent for teachers to prescribe a particular 
side to be maintained by a student whether he is 
really on that side or not. The justification of this 
is that it is often a means of getting a student to 
see with greater clearness the "other side." 

The research method, on the other hand, would 
have the student start on the debatable question 
with a perfectly unbiassed mind, seek out all the 
arguments available on both sides, and ponder these 
carefully. When every available source of evidence 
has been exhausted, the student balances all the 
facts, and decides on the one side or the other. It 
should be a point of honour to come to a definite 
conclusion. This last consideration is of impor- 
tance to only a small class of students. Most of us 
are only too prone to come to a definite conclusion 
very early in the investigation, and cling to that 
conclusion, even against a considerable amount of 
hostile evidence. But, on the other hand, there are 
people with such a tendency to hesitate between two 
opinions that they can hardly ever make up their 
minds on a really debatable point. On a purely 
academic matter, such as the saneness of Hamlet, a 
man may hold suspended judgment throughout his 
life without sin. But there are other matters, say 
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A Guide for All Students 

Woman's Suffrage, on which we must make up our 
minds one way or the other because we have to take 
some sort of action. In order that we may be able 
to make up our minds definitely in cases where a 
decision is imperative, it is well to acquire the habit 
of bringing all discussions to a definite positive 
conclusion. 

You must not be misled by the plea of the credit- 
able desire to see both sides of the question. You 
are entitled to a sight of all there is to be seen ; but 
you are not entitled to sit down and contemplate 
both sides indefinitely. Among the old Greeks there 
was a law that made it imperative for the voter to 
take sides : he was expected to give both sides full 
consideration, but he was compelled to decide for 
one or the other at last. Our advice here is to apply 
in a practical way the law of the excluded middle. 
Put yourself in the place of a juryman: he must 
make the prisoner out to be either guilty or not 
guilty. No doubt if he has the good fortune to be a 
Scotsman and at home the juryman has a loophole. 
He may bring in a verdict of Not Proven. But 
this loophole is only the result of Scots caution, and 
Scots love of logic. The Scotsmen know that the 
prisoner is either guilty or not guilty, but they don't 
know which. In certain cases they do know that 
the charge against him has not been proved satis- 
factorily, so they give the prisoner the benefit of the 
doubt. Wherever anybody else's interest is involved 
it is an excellent plan to adopt the Scots subterfuge. 

L 2 59] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

But where it is a matter of intellectual decision, 
have the courage to determine one way or the other. 
It is an excellent tonic to have to make up your mind 
definitely : it gives all the arguments a certain sharp- 
ness when a point is reached at which they are to 
produce a definite decision. So long as you are not 
dealing with other people's money, rights or feel- 
ings, you must be prepared to risk a little by coming 
to a conclusion. You may be wrong, no doubt, but 
a wrong conclusion honestly reached after careful 
inquiry is better than a wobbly halting between two 
opinions. Let your dialectic essay then finish with 
a summing up and a verdict. There is no harm in 
keeping an open mind so far as future evidence may 
be concerned, but at the end of your essay you 
ought to have the courage of your conviction. 

Very often, however, the so-called research 
method leads to a mechanical result. The problem 
is stated in the form of a question, and the working 
out is largely a matter of statistics. Suppose, for 
example, the problem is set Whether does the 
American boy or the German boy spend more time 
in school during the year? As a matter of fact we 
all know perfectly well, before we start our investi- 
gation, that the German boy will come out ahead. 
Still, when a research has been instituted, and by a 
comparison of time-tables and school schedules it is 
found that the American boy spends from 900 to 
1,000 hours in school each year, as against the 
German's 1,400 hours, and 185 to 200 school days 
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A Guide for All Students 

as against the German's 270 school days, 1 we feel 
that we have made an advance. 

Research, however, should risk a little more than 
this. It should include not only the collection of 
statistics, but the discovery of the meaning under- 
lying the statistics. Suppose, for instance, that you 
have an essay prescribed to you on The Influence of 
School on Men who attain Distinction. You could, 
no doubt, make up your mind on the subject, and 
give a few examples that you happen to remember, 
so as to back up what you say. But here you have 
an excellent opportunity for a little bit of research. 
First of all you will look up all the books you happen 
to have of your own, dealing with the biographies of 
men of distinction. You will not re-read them, but 
merely glance at the introductory part in each case, 
to see what reference is made to their schools. After 
noting the results, you will next go to whatever 
reference library you have access to and consult 
many more books in this desultory way. Probably 
this will be all that you are able to do if the essay is 
an ordinary part of your work. You cannot afford 
more time. The results of even this small research 
will probably rather disquiet you, for you will likely 
find much less about the schools than you had ex- 
pected. The effect of this should be to make you 
cautious in laying too much stress upon the influence 
of the school, for absence of evidence may in itself 
indicate a fact that you had not anticipated. 

^Educational Review (American), April, 1914, p. 428. 
[26l] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

If now you had time and wanted to make a 
genuine research, you might arrange with some of 
your class-mates to go through a systematic search 
of the lives of great men. This could be done com- 
paratively easily, since there is an important work, 
The Dictionary of National Biography that runs 
to twenty-two 1 volumes and contains over 30,000 
biographies. If you and your friends divided up 
the volumes, you could arrange that each should be 
responsible for one volume. All that would be neces- 
sary is to examine the beginning of each of the 
biographies and note all those cases in which there 
is a direct reference to the school, noting further 
whether the reference is favourable to the school or 
not. In this way you would find the number of 
cases in which there is no reference to school at all, 
and the number in which there is such a reference as 
shows that the school has exercised either little in- 
fluence, a good influence, or an evil influence on the 
great men. Such an investigation has not yet been 
made, so there is an opening to your hand for a co- 
operative research, that might lead to useful results. 

At the present time there is a tendency to over- 
rate research for its own sake. It is quite possible, 
with a good deal of patience, to discover the exact 
number of times the letter e is used in Hamlet. This 
is research : it is also waste of time. It is not justi- 
fiable even as an exercise, for the same practice 

J The original edition has sixty-three volumes, with four 
supplementary volumes. 

[ 262] 



A Guide for All Students 

could have been obtained in carrying out a research 
that, even if it does not reveal anything new, at 
least confirms what is already known, and makes the 
researcher realize what he knew before only in a 
vague way, and on the evidence of others. We all 
know in a general way that Milton uses a higher 
percentage of Latinized words than does Defoe. But 
if we take the trouble to select two thousand words 
consecutively from any part of the Areopagitica, and 
two thousand words consecutively from any part of 
Robinson Crusoe, and classify the words as (i) 
Latinized, (2) Saxon, and (3) those neither Latin 
nor Saxon in origin, we get a quantitative result 
from which we can say with greater exactness how 
the two vocabularies stand to one another. Results 
of this kind very often surprise the investigators : 
nearly always they suggest facts that had not before 
been suspected. 

A particularly useful exercise at the early stages 
of your practice in research is the verification or 
testing of results obtained by others. The advan- 
tage of this exercise is that you have a sort of 
standard by which to judge whether you are keeping 
fairly near the truth. If your results are widely 
different from those of your predecessor, you have 
the alluring hunt for the big error you have made, 
with, of course, just the delightful possibility that 
the error was made by the other fellow. 



l26 3 l 



CHAPTER X 



EXAMINATIONS 

IN the first chapter of the second book of Dickens' 
Our Mutual Friend we have the following 
account of an elementary schoolmaster, Bradley 
Headstone by name: 

"From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place 
of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale 
warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the 
demands of retail dealers — history here, geography there, 
astronomy to the right, political economy to the left — natural 
history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathe- 
matics, and what not, all in their several places — this care 
had imparted to his countenance a look of care ; while the 
habit of questioning and being questioned had given him a 
suspicious manner, a manner that would be better described 
as one of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble 
in the face. It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or 
inattentive intellect that had toiled hard to get what it had 
won, and that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He 
always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should be missing 
from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure 
himself." 

Here we have a scornful account of the state of mind 
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A Guide for All Students 

produced by an excessive attention to examinations. 
But we are not to be misled by Dickens' contempt 
into thinking that examinations are necessarily bad. 
It is, no doubt, wrong to adopt the view that the 
mind is a mere storehouse and that knowledge is 
to be regarded as nothing more than the stock of a 
retail or even a wholesale shopkeeper. But it is quite 
a sensible thing to take stock now and then of our 
mental content, not only to see that there is nothing 
missing, but to make sure that what is present is 
arranged in the most satisfactory way. We have 
seen that the best way to remember things is to keep 
turning them over in our mind, and reviewing them 
in their proper relations to each other. This is 
obviously a form of examination conducted by our- 
selves. It is really a part of our education, and a 
very important part. 

The same sort of work can be done for us in our 
regular studies by more or less formal examinations 
conducted by others. We are too apt to regard 
examinations merely as tests. No doubt this is often 
the function that is emphasized by all concerned with 
them. But we are not to forget that they have also 
an educational function. They form an essential 
part of our education, and if properly used are very 
helpful in our studies. If you have ever gone in for 
a serious examination involving a considerable 
amount of preparation, you have, no doubt, had an 
experience something like this. Just about three 
weeks before the examination is due, you have had 
[265] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

the curious feeling that you are beginning really to 
know the subject, and if only you had other three 
months instead of three weeks you could truly master 
it. The cause of this feeling is that towards the 
end of your long preparation you are revising a 
good deal of the work you have previously done. 
Accordingly, you are dealing with much larger slices 
of the subject at a time than you .have been accus- 
tomed to during your ordinary preparation. The 
result is that you have perforce to ta^ce wider views, 
you see things more in their .relation to the whole, 
you begin to have a glimpse of the meaning under- 
lying that whole. As you thus begin to appreciate 
the general principles underlying the detailed knowl- 
edge you have acquired, you inevitably tend to 
organize your knowledge and thus to experience a 
feeling of mastery that mere details cannot give. 

Preparing to work an examination paper to be 
set by another person is itself a sort of examination 
of ourselves conducted by ourselves. The advantage 
of having a paper set by some one else is that we 
have to take into account the possibilities of questions 
being set quite other than those we have been setting 
to ourselves. We are all apt to get into a groove: 
we deal with aspects of our studies in which we are 
specially interested. But when we know that our 
work has to stand the test of questions set by a 
person who may not share our view about the inter- 
esting points, we have to take a wider sweep, and 
try to get a true estimate of the relative importance 
[266] 



A Guide for All Students 

of facts, apart altogether from our own particular 
preferences. 

When examinations are regarded as tests, they 
follow two lines. Some of the questions are intended 
to test merely whether the student knows certain 
things. Here the point is whether the student can 
reproduce what he has learnt. This is the lower 
kind of examination, and does not rise above the 
level of Bradley Headstone's mechanical stowage, 
and mental stocktaking. Other questions, however, 
are set on the principle of getting the pupil to apply 
the knowledge he has acquired. The student may 
know all the facts necessary to solve a given problem 
and yet be unable to solve it. On the other hand, if 
he can solve the problem, he has given proof that he 
knows the facts on which the solution depends. It 
would seem, therefore, that all examination questions 
should be such as involve problems, for if the pupil 
can apply knowledge, it proves that he possesses 
knowledge. 

But it is felt that certain pupils may have acquired 
knowledge without having the ability to apply it, 
and that, therefore, there ought to be a certain 
number of questions in every examination paper for 
the benefit of those who have honestly acquired 
knowledge that they cannot successfully apply. It 
is maintained that the examination may be used to 
test the industry of the candidate as well as his 
ability. It may be very reasonably questioned 
whether any good end can be served by acquiring 
[267] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

knowledge that we confessedly cannot use, but this 
problem has to be solved by those who are respon- 
sible for the drawing up of examination papers. 
Our interest in this book is how to help the student 
to deal most advantageously with examinations as 
they are. It is almost certain that at some time or 
other you will have to face an examination of some 
kind, and it is therefore to your interest to consider 
how you can best prepare for that examination. 

( i ) The first thing to be done is to find out as 
much as you can about the exact nature of the par- 
ticular examination that you must face. From one 
point of view it is rather a fine thing to despise 
examinations and give your whole attention to your 
studies. If we work up our various subjects in the 
best way, we are entitled to expect that the examina- 
tion will fit into what we have done, and to com- 
plain if the examination results do not favour those 
who have studied in the best way. All this would 
be just and proper if examinations were ideal. But 
unfortunately this is not the case, and if the passing 
of an examination is of importance to you, it will 
be to your interest to take the proper means to 
acquaint yourself with its conditions. To prepare 
for an examination that is not conducted on the best 
lines may in some degree interfere with your mode 
of preparation, and may make you to some extent 
depart from your ideals. But as a rule skilful 
preparation for a given examination may v be com- 
bined with a satisfactory scheme of mastering the 
[268] 



A Guide for All Students 

subjects studied. A good deal will depend upon 
whether the examination is competitive or merely a 
pass one. If you have only to reach a fair pass 
standard you will usually find that you can attain 
what you want -without seriously modifying your 
plan -of study. Such examinations can be "taken in 
your stride" ; i. e., you can go on with your studies 
in your usual way and just give a little brush up 
before the examination actually takes place. With 
competitive examinations, on the other hand, when 
it is necessary to squeeze out of the examiners every 
possible mark, it may well be that you have to adopt 
quite a special line of study preparing for the ex- 
amination, rather than studying your subjects for 
their own sakes. 

This putting of the examination in the first place 
is in itself radically bad. The examination should 
be a means and not an end. If, in the ordinary work 
of a school, the examination at the end of the -year 
dominates all the work of the year, there is something 
wrong. The cart is being put before the horse. The 
principle is educationally unsound. But in the case 
of a competitive examination, the result of which is 
to determine a scholarship or a post in the Civil 
Service or elsewhere, it is not a matter of education 
at all, it is a matter of economics. 

But even an ordinary pass examination at the 

end of a school or college term deserves attention 

to the extent of your finding out its exact nature. 

I have come across many cases of young people 

[269] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

doing a year's work, at the end of which they were 
expected to take the Intermediate examination of 
the University of London, without ever having ex- 
amined the requirements in the different subjects. 
This did not result from a lofty view -of the dignity 
of well-directed study, and a contempt for the re- 
strictions of mere examination requirements, but 
from sheer indifference and lack of interest. These 
young people did their work from day to day as 
prescribed by their teachers, and thought that this 
was all that was necessary. The first thing these 
young people should have done was to get a copy 
of the syllabus in each of their subjects, and famil- 
iarize themselves with the field they had to cover 
in their studies during the year. 

(2) In all cases where a printed syllabus of work 
is available it should be compared with the textbooks 
that you are studying. If anything appears in the 
syllabus that does not appear in the contents or index 
of your textbook, you must make it your business 
to supply the missing information. This is particu- 
larly necessary in the case of technical terms. If 
you are attending a class in the subject, it will prob- 
ably be enough if you make a note of any such 
omissions, and then keep a careful eye upon this note 
during the session. If the lacking piece of informa- 
tion does not make its appearance in your notes of 
lectures, then it will be necessary to make inquiry 
from your teacher, within a reasonable time of the 
date of the examination. 

[270] 



A Guide for All Students 

(3) In some cases, particularly in scholarship 
examinations and some of the higher civil service 
examinations, there is no published syllabus. The 
candidate is faced with the bald statement that he 
will be examined in, say, English, Greek, Latin, 
Mathematics, and Physics. In such cases it is usually 
possible to procure copies of former examination 
papers. If you can get hold of the papers for a few 
years preceding the date of your own examination 
you will be able to form a serviceable idea of the 
nature and scope of the examination. But there is 
a strong, and not altogether ill founded, prejudice 
against using old examination papers in preparation. 
The usual objection is that those who adopt this 
method are really placing the examination in an 
altogether too commanding a position in relation to 
the real work of education. But here again the 
same considerations come in as in connexion with the 
question of examinations in general. If we were 
dealing with a class test or an ordinary non-competi- 
tive examination, there is no doubt that a study of 
the old papers would be undesirable. But where 
there is competition there should be equality of 
advantages. Of two candidates preparing for the 
same examination, the one who has used old papers 
has a.very great advantage over the one who has not. 
It is for this reason that in connexion with certain 
examinations every effort is made to prevent the 
publication or distribution of the examination papers. 
But the result is usually that certain unscrupulous 
[271] 



Making the Most of Ones Mind 

persons obtain old papers, and thus get an illegiti- 
mate advantage. It would be fairer all round to 
publish the papers and let everybody have the same 
chance. 

Granting that the use of old papers is justifiable, 
the question remains of how to make the best of 
them. Students sometimes make the serious mistake 
of merely glancing over old papers and saying to 
themselves, "Well, I could do numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 9 
easily, numbers 1, 7 and 10 fairly well, but numbers 
4 and 8 I couldn't do at all." This general impres- 
sion is of little use. What is wanted is that you 
should sit down and work out the paper as a whole 
under examination conditions. This means that you 
must set apart three hours, or whatever the regular 
time is, and sit down and work out the paper as if 
the examiner were in your room. In this way you 
will learn a great deal. To begin with, you will 
almost certainly find that the questions you thought 
you could easily "polish off" have much more fight 
in them than you had expected. Then you will 
probably find that you have miscalculated the time, 
and at the end you have to hurry over matters that 
you know to be important. The real fact of the 
matter is that while working examination papers is 
supposed to test general intelligence, it really tests 
mainly the power to write -examination papers. To 
do examinations is a business like any other, and has 
to be learned. An experienced writer of examina- 
tion answers will get far more value out of the ex- 
[272] 



A Guide for All Students 

aminers than one who has no experience of working 
papers but has the same amount of knowledge of 
the subject as his more experienced rival. The im- 
portant point for you to remember is that of two 
candidates of equal experience in writing examina- 
tion papers that one will have the advantage whose 
experience has been gained in papers that most 
closely resemble the paper in question. Enough has 
been said to show the importance of practising work- 
ing out the very sort of papers likely to be set, and 
that under precisely the conditions that will obtain 
at the real examination. 

(4) More doubtful is the advice sometimes given 
to make a study of the personality of the examiner. 
The doubt, it is to be noted, is on the moral side. 
There can be no question of the advantage of a 
knowledge of the peculiarities of an examiner who 
is to set and mark your papers. The question is 
whether it is justifiable that candidates should seek 
for and utilize this information. Probably the matter 
can be best compromised by regarding as legitimate 
the use of any public facts about the examiner. A 
glance at Who's Who may give you a hint or two 
that are open to the whole public. If he has written 
books on the subject, it is surely legitimate to con- 
sult them, and make whatever application your in- 
telligence suggests. 

(5) The zone of real danger is approached when 
we consider the calculation of the probabilities of 
particular questions being set at a given examination. 

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Making the Most of Ones Mind 

Here we are introducing the sporting element, and 
backing our guesses by paying particular attention 
to the sort of questions that we expect to be 'set this 
year. Certain cramming institutions have carefully 
prepared tables showing the chances of particular 
questions being set at certain examinations. The 
element of the real importance of a question is 
dwarfed in view of the recency of its appearance on 
an examination paper. It may be safely said that 
all considerations of this kind may be very wisely 
neglected by the honest student. He should be always 
ready for any of the "stock" questions that may be 
set, whether they appeared last year or ten years 
ago. To be really prepared for the examination 
implies the power of dealing with any of the stock 
questions, and for any peculiar question it is neither 
possible nor desirable to make preparation. Such 
questions owe their value to their power of testing 
the capacity of the student in dealing with unex- 
pected matter. 

(6) In the actual working out of an examination 
paper in the examination hall some hints may be 
of use. To an experienced examinee what follows 
will no doubt appear very elementary, but we must 
consider the case of the less experienced. Taking 
it for granted that the immediate purpose of the 
examinee is to extract from the examiner the 
greatest possible number of marks, we have to work 
on the very humble plane of utility, and consider 
how this end can be best attained. 
[274] 



A Guide for All Students 

(a) Come to an examination with a well-rested 
body and brain. This is a rule that the best students 
find it hardest to observe. There is a class of 
students that have no difficulty in avoiding the add- 
ling of brains that necessarily follows on the late 
sitting of the night before an examination. But 
your genuinely anxious student can hardly be con- 
vinced that it is folly to cram up a few more facts 
at the expense of the general vigour of all his 
answers. Do not be misled by the remark common 
among students that if they had not ground away 
far into the early hours they would not have been 
able to answer this or that question. No doubt it 
sometimes happens that a student has re-read at his 
late sitting the answers to some of the very ques- 
tions that meet him next morning. To begin with, 
this is only a chance, and cannot be relied on : while 
the general muddleheadedness and lassitude are 
certainties. Again, while the chance help affects only 
one, or at most two, of the questions, the general 
weariness affects the whole paper. You will be well 
advised to go to bed early on the evening preceding 
an examination and to be in the examination hall 
at least ten minutes ahead of the time for the paper. 

(b) Consider-, the evening before, what you have 
to take with you to the examination* hall. In some 
examinations everything is provided in the hall. But 
even if ink is provided you will be well advised to 
take your own pen with you. A pencil is always 
convenient, and if you have practical work of any 

[275] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

kind to do it is well to have with you whatever in- 
struments you are allowed to bring. It frequently 
happens that one's own instrument adds materially 
to one's courage at an examination. One article 
should never be left behind. The clock in the ex- 
amination hall is not always visible to all the candi- 
dates. Besides, it is sometimes wrong. You must 
run no risk of finding out at the end of the time 
that when you thought you had half an hour you 
have only a quarter. A watch — a watch that will 
go — is an essential part of your examination-room 
equipment. 

(c) Read your whole paper and note whether it is 
printed on both sides. Few candidates read their 
papers with anything like the care that those papers 
deserve. Frequently they come away happy, only 
to discover when the paper is beyond recall that it 
contained some important remarks on the other side. 
The cause of the common blunder is not far to seek. 
Questions are long and time is fleeting. Time must 
be saved at all costs, and the foolish candidates begin 
to economize at the wrong end. Let them consider 
the remark of a distinguished surgeon to his assist- 
ant who was eager to lose no time : "In cases of this 
kind the surgeon has no time to be in a hurry." 

Connected with this rule is the problem whether 
a candidate should read all the paper at once before 
beginning to answer any questions, or should start 
right away with the first question .he can face. It is 
sometimes argued that by reading over the whole 
[276] 



A Guide for All Students 

paper the candidate gets discouraged, and cannot do 
well even what he knows, through the shock of dis- 
covering how much he does not know. While it 
must be admitted that for the ordinary student there 
are few more depressing documents than sheets of 
examination questions, it seems an ostrich-like way 
of meeting the difficulty to avoid seeing it as long as 
possible. Every experienced examinee will tell you 
that at the beginning of an examination the nerves 
are hardly in a condition to carry out the orders of 
the brain, even when the brain knows precisely what 
to order. The time s£ent in studying the paper as 
a whole encourages the nerves to settle down to 
steady work. Besides, everyone with any experience 
knows that the first sight of the examination paper 
almost always has a paralysing effect that produces 
the feeling that the paper is an impossible one, and 
that failure is staring the reader in the face. The 
time spent in considering the paper as a whole gives 
this feeling leisure to fade, for there are few papers 
that do not present some foothold for even incom- 
petent candidates. The final reason for reading over 
the whole before putting pen to paper is that our 
next rule becomes an impossibility unless this be 
done. 

(d) Plan out generally the time that you can allow 
for each of the questions that you propose to answer. 
There must be nothing slavish in this. Eight ques- 
tions in a two-hour paper give a comfortable quarter 
of an hour for each, with no time for revision; but 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

it is always well to leave a few minutes free for re- 
reading your answers just before you hand in your 
paper. 

In a three-hour paper there would be twenty 
minutes to each question with twenty minutes over 
for revision. But if one of the questions demands 
an elaborate analysis of a standard English Classic, 
while another will be content with the enumeration 
of a dozen English authors, a new element is intro- 
duced. But even after you have made a rough and 
rapid allocation of time to the different questions, 
you must not be too much tied down by it. On 
trial a certain question may prove to be more difficult 
than you thought. In this case you had better leave 
it unfinished, and go on to the next, leaving a space 
sufficient to hold the rest of the answer if your hope 
is fulfilled that there may be one of the other ques- 
tions that balances matters by proving not so difficult 
as you had imagined. 

But even if you do not find it possible to return 
to the unfinished answer, you have acted not un- 
wisely in leaving it. For I am now going to say a 
rather heterodox thing. All our moral books din 
into our ears that one thing at a time and that well 
done is the true rule of life and the only pathway to 
success. I am not going to deny its truth in general 
— but in examinations it does not work. Leaving 
out of account the moral question, and considering 
merely the best way of extracting the greatest pos- 
sible number of marks out of the examiner, it will 
[278] 



A Guide for All Students 

be found that in an examination two half -answers 
are better than one whole one. There is an element 
of wisdom in the Irishwoman's method of buying 
•her pound of tea by ounces, because she got "the 
turn of the scale every time." 

To begin with, it has to be remembered that an 
examiner — except in the case of arithmetic and one 
or two of the exact quantitative 'sciences, where the 
principle does not hold — almost never gives the full 
marks for any answer, however well done; while a 
half-answer readily, and apparently justly, gets half- 
marks. If a candidate makes some correct remarks 
on a subject the examiner feels called upon to give 
some credit for them, and that credit is usually much 
greater than would be given for the same amount of 
time spent on elaborating a fair answer into an ex- 
cellent one. For every candidate must have observed 
that the beginning of an answer is usually much 
easier than the ending. You remember easily the 
big important facts, and these rightly carry the bulk 
of the marks; but to put in all the fine details de- 
mands more knowledge, time and ingenuity than are 
always available. You can pour out a pot of honey 
in a few minutes or even seconds, but if the pot 
must be completely emptied in order to secure full 
payment, it seems likely that the additional time 
might be more profitably spent. Therefore make 
sure that you leave no compulsory question unat- 
tempted, even though you do not feel able to give a 
full and accurate answer. 

[279] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

It may be well to add that these considerations 
are applicable mainly to public examinations con- 
ducted on a large scale by external bodies. In class 
examinations and in examinations intended to test 
ability rather than mere attainment other standards 
maintain. One really excellent answer may be ac- 
cepted by the examiner as counterbalancing any 
number of half worked out but fairly accurate 
answers. You must therefore take into account the 
kind of examination at which you are sitting, and 
make up your mind beforehand whether you are 
going to rely upon a thin spread of knowledge, or 
a concentration on what you really know well, and a 
neglect of the rest. 

(e) If there be a choice of questions, select those 
of which you are quite sure you know the answers. 
This is another rule that candidates find it very 
hard to obey. You may even accuse me of incon- 
sistency in laying it down. You may say that it 
does not agree with the rule in (d). For I am now 
saying that a perfectly answered question brings 
more marks than one imperfectly answered. But the 
cases are not parallel. You may have observed in 
your experience that when you are not sure about 
a question it almost invariably turns out that you 
do not know what you were doubtful about. An 
answer of which you are not sure generally contains 
things you would rather have left unsaid, and it is 
precisely such remarks that reduce percentages of 
marks. Certain mistakes have the effect of not only 
[280] 



A Guide for All Students 

not making marks, but of causing the withdrawal 
of marks legitimately won in other directions. When 
an answer is one-half right and the other half non- 
sense, the examiner is inclined to say to himself: 
"The blockhead who can make such blunders in 
one part of his answer, probably does not under- 
stand even what he has happened to put down cor- 
rectly." So that it often comes out that half right 
and half wrong does not get fifty per cent, but only 
twenty-five. This may not be quite fair, still we 
are not here talking of fairness, but of how to gain 
marks, and the best way to gain marks is to choose 
the questions that we are sure of. 

Further, it is worth your while to consider this 
point that the more difficult you find a question the 
more important you are apt to think it. What 
seems easy to you may be, from the examiner's 
point of view, more important than what gives you 
trouble. In certain examinations the number of 
marks allocated to each question is printed at the 
side. In such cases there is commonly much sur- 
prise among the candidates at the high marks given 
to certain questions that appear to them to be easier 
than certain others that carry much lower marks. 
This should strengthen you in your determination 
to select those questions that appear to you to be 
most within your powers. 

(/) Every question has a definite point. This point 
must be discovered before any answer can be profit- 
ably attempted. No doubt questions are frequently 
[281] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

put clumsily and ambiguously. They may not really 
have a point, but they are all meant to have one, and 
it is the candidate's business to find it. This is not 
the place to grumble at badly set questions. Our 
business is rather to consider how to deal properly 
with such inconveniences. If a question is really 
ambiguous you must choose one of the two meanings, 
and answer as if that were the only meaning. But 
be careful to state the difficulty you have had and 
that you have made the assumption that the meaning 
you have adopted is the true one. It is worth re- 
membering that if the examiner has been ambiguous 
he is inclined to make allowances, so you need have 
no hesitation in adopting whichever of the two mean- 
ings happens to be the more convenient for you to 
answer. 

But with an ordinary honest straightforward 
question this plan of adapting it to your own needs 
will not work. No one but an experienced examiner 
can realize the number of cases in which candidates 
attempt to cover up their ignorance on one point by 
an excessive display of knowledge on another. Now 
you may take it as axiomatic that this plan does 
not work. Even examiners have enough intelligence 
to insist upon getting what they want. Very prob- 
ably, however, much of what the examiners com- 
plain about is the result not of attempts to throw 
dust in their eyes, but of careless reading of the 
questions. One very common cause of the mis- 
understanding of questions is the expectation that 
[282] 



A Guide for All Students 

certain questions are likely to be set. The candidate 
who has prepared with great care and in much detail 
an account of the war of the Spanish Succession, 
sees the expected question on the paper and eagerly 
and voluminously answers it, only to discover when 
all is over that what the question had to do with 
was the Austrian Succession. In a Government ex- 
amination for teachers a question was set on the 
uses to which school libraries could be put in the 
cultivation of the intelligence and in the teaching of 
composition. The majority of the answers dealt 
with the best way of getting up a school library 
and who should give out the books. These were 
the matters the candidates expected to be asked 
about. 

(g) Avoid "shots" at examinations. We have 
already considered the place of guessing in the 
process of study, and the principles we have recog- 
nized enable us to come to a definite recommenda- 
tion with regard to attempting to meet a question 
by an answer that may be compared to a shot in 
the dark. The chance of hitting the mark is so 
infinitesimal as to be negligible, while the result 
will probably be so ludicrously irrational that it 
is likely to reduce the value of the rest of the paper. 
But if the context suggests something to you, it 
may not be a bad plan to make your shot. Suppose 
you are asked, "Where is Khvalynsk?" You have 
never heard of the place before, but you may fairly 
guess that it is in Russia, and answer accordingly. 
[283] 



ing the Most of One s Mind 

The following is a typically honest "shot." The 
candidate was asked to explain the term Landskip, 
as found in Milton, and to give its derivation. 

"This appears to be another form of what we now call a 
landslip, in which the land, on account of the slipperiness of 
the stratum underneath it, begins to slip down the hill. If 
it slips very fast it may be said to skip — hence the name. 
I have never seen this word before." 



This candidate lost nothing by this ingenious 
guess, though, of course, he gained nothing, since 
he did not know that landscape is derived, accord- 
ing to one dictionary at anyrate, from an older 
form, landshape, though others say it really is an- 
other form of landschap, which means land ship, and 
may be compared with the German landschaft. 

Of course, it goes without saying that you will 
never make a shot at what you do not know, if there 
is any choice of things you do know; and if you 
do make your shot, you will do it with an indication 
of your data. It is perhaps in the translation paper 
that the temptation to make shots is greatest, and 
yet there the intelligent student with a feeling for 
language has a fair chance of success. The con- 
text is often so suggestive that it is not difficult to 
hit upon the necessary word. In cases of this kind 
it is not essential to declare that you have made a 
shot. The fact proclaims itself, and on the other 
hand the exercise is unseen translation is a sort of 
legalized shot-making. It is really an invitation to 
[284] 



A Guide for All Students 



use all the knowledge you possess in order to dis- 
cover a meaning that is hidden by your ignorance 
of certain words. If the passage is taken from a 
book which we are supposed to have prepared, the 
licence to shoot is no longer available, and if we 
shoot we must proclaim the fact and take the con- 
sequences. 

{li) Be sure that you take full advantage of any 
information that the examination paper itself sup- 
plies. Even in such a trifling matter as spelling 
there is often help to be had from the printed paper. 
Candidates are sometimes so culpably careless as 
to misspell a word that actually occurs in the ques- 
tion set. But there are other ways in which one 
part of the paper may help another. For instance, 
examiners sometimes ask for illustrations of certain 
things, and the student has only to turn to some of 
the other questions to find all he needs. In a paper 
on English, for example, one question may be to 
give examples of various figures of speech, and 
another to specify which author is responsible for 
each of quite a large number of quotations. It will 
be rather remarkable if the intelligent candidate is 
not able to 'find among the quotations all the ex- 
amples he needs. A really skilful examiner makes 
sure that his paper does not play in this way into 
the hands of the candidates ; but then the supply of 
really skilful examiners is not in excess of the 
demand. 

(i) Read over each question when you have fin- 
[285] 



Making the Most of One s Mind 

ished it, but if you have any time left at the end of 
the whole paper, you will find it well spent in re- 
reading all your answers. You will sometimes be 
amazed at the mistakes you find, mistakes that you 
would not have believed it possible you could make 
had you not seen them actually lying there before 
you in your own handwriting. The last thing you 
should do before handing in your papers is to see 
that the proper number of the question is placed 
before each answer, and that your own name and 
any other indications are placed where they ought to 
be. This last is merely a special precaution, as 
every experienced student knows that his first busi- 
ness in dealing with his examination answer book is 
to fill in his name and other particulars. 



[286] 



INDEX 



Absorption, 129 
Addison, 173, 255 
"Allusive" writers, 196 
Alsted, Johann Heinrich, 202 
Alternative, fixing of the, 79 
Analogy, 105 

Analysis of Chapter IV, 237 
Analytical note-taking, 229 
Appeals for subject matter, 209 
Apperception, 89 
Area of attention, 132, 133 
Areopagitica, 263 
Aristotle, 179 

Armstrong, Professor Henry E., 150 
Arnold, Felix, 222 
Ascham, Roger, 17, 18, 19, 157 
Assimilation, 89 
Associative listening, 217 
Attention, classification and manip- 
ulation of, 123 
Rhythm of, 130 
Attitude, the potency of, 116 
Audiles, 24, 25 



Baedeker, 220 

Bennett, Arnold, 162 

Bible, 173, 200 

Bibliographies, 208 

Bi-polar process in lecturing, 214 

Blake, William, 28 

Block system, 71 

Bookishness, 155 

Books of reference, 188 

Bookworms, 156 

Bounder, 28 

Brain, upper and lower, 12 

Brewer, Dr. E. C, 197. 

Britannica Encyclopaedia, 203, 204 

Browning, 38, 165 

Browsing, 172 

"Brute" Memory, 61, 73 

Buff on, 116 

Burke, 150, 173 



Calculation of probabilities at exam- 
inations, 273 

Careless reading of examination ques- 
tions, 282 

Carlyle, 180 

Chambers' Encyclopmdia, 203, 206 

Cholerics, 21 



Clarke, Mrs. Cowden, 200 
Committing- to memory, 67 
Complete detail method, 56 
Conceit, 25, 27 
Concentration beat, 131, 215 

Range of, 132 
Concordances, 199 
Conscience, 44, 45, 49, 113, 174, 182, 

187 
Co-operative study, in 
Cranmer, 3 
Cromwell, 148 
Crusoe, Robinson, 226, 263 
Curve of fatigue, 48, 49 



D'Alembert, 139, 140 

Dante, 223 

Dative in Latin, 76 

Deductive thinking, 100 

Defoe, 263 

Desk table, 114 

Dialectic compositions, 257, 260 

Dickens, 264 

Dictation in lecturing, 228 

Dictionaries and their uses, 189 

English-foreign, 190 

Rhyming, 197 

Size of, 193 

Supplementary dictionaries, 196 
Dictionary, 168, 169, 171 

Definition of, 200 

Distinction from encyclopedia, 
202, 203 
Difference of opinions, cause of, 95 
Difficulties, how to deal with, 137 
Diffusion beat, 130, 216 
Drummond, Professor, 149 



Early rising, 114 

Educand, 6 

Educand to educator, 7, 32 

Combination of educand and edu- 
cator, 146 
Educator, 6 

External, 6 
Elimination of external educator, 6 
Elizabeth, Queen, 18 
Empirics, 106 
Encyclopaedias, 202 

Use of illustrated, 205 
Ends and ideals, 39 

Ends, need for clear, 122, 151 



[287] 



Index 



English-Latin dictionaries and their 

use, 191 
Ennui, 53 
Essay writing, 251 
Essays as class exercises, 256 
Euphues, 18 
Examination as revision, 265 

As test 267 
Examination syllabuses, 270 
Examination work, 92 
Examiner, personality of, 273 
Examiners as lecturers, 229 
Expression, 84 



Fabre, J. Henri, 29, 31. 140 
Fact into faculty 84, 136 
Failure, temporary, 140 
Fatigue, 45 

Pathological form of, 54 
Fatigue curve, 48 
Fatigue-producing effects, 52 
Form and matter in composition, 254 
Foster, 255 

Free translation versus literal, 242 
Freedom, 8, 31 
Froebel, 84 

Full marks at examinations, 281 
Fumbling, 107, 151 



Gaping point, the, 143, 151 
Goldsmith, 39, 173. 255 
Gravitation, law of, 8s 
Gray, 70 

Grey, Lady Jane, 18 
Guessing, 93, 98 

H 

Hamilton, Sir William, 228 

Hamlet, 262 

Hard Wits, 20, 57. 157 

Harmsworth's Encyclopedia, 204, 206 

Headstone, Bradley, 264, 267 

Hearing distinguished from listening, 
213 

Henry VII, illustrative study of, 117 

Herder, J. G., 159 

Heuristic method, 149 

Hints for the actual working of ex- 
amination papers, 274 

Home study, 36, 40 

Humours, 21 

Huxley, 234 

Hypothesis, 99 



Ideals, 38 

Ideas, 86 

Impression, 84 

Inattention, 123, 216 

Index, 186 

Index to encyclopaedia, 204 



Inductive thinking, 100 

Inference, 107 

Inference stage, 141 

Instalment system of memorizing, 66 

Instruction, meaning and applica- 
tion, 218 

Intercourse, 24, 25, 154, 155, 166, 
178, 188, 189 

Interest and its manipulation, 126 

Introspection, 14 



Jacotot, 29 

Jesuits on lecturing, 228 

Johnson, Dr., 169, 255 



Kemsies, 52 
Kipling, 198 

Knowledge, three ways of acquiring, 
24 
Active and passive, 8s 



Lamb, Charles, 254 
Latin prepositions, 77 
Laurie, Professor, 30 
Laws of thought, as thought, 94, 99 
Le Bon, Gustave, 11 
Learning by rote or by heart, 67 
Lecturer's notes in relation to stu- 
dent's notes, 236 
Lectures as a means of communi- 
cating knowledge, 224 
As distinguished from chapter in 

textbook, 22s 
Inspirational or didactic, 217 
Lecturing, bi-polar, 214 

Lecturing distinguished from teach- 
ing, 214 
Lernfreiheit, 32 

Lip movements in reading, 158 
Listening distinguished from hearing, 
213 
Listening intermittent and rhyth- 
mical, 215 
"Projection" in listening, 216 
Locke, John, 96, 98, 209 
Long-hand note-taking, 228 
Looking before and after, 134 
Loose sentence in lecturing, 226 
Lotze, Professor, 22 

M 

Macaulay, Lord, 170 

Mackay, Dr., 75 

Manipulation of time at examination, 

277 
Map of England, 121 
Marking books, 175 
Mathematical limit, 38, 3g 
Melancholies, 21 
Memoria technica, 74 



[288 



Index 



Memories, kinds of, 24 

Memory, effect of clean living on, 61 

Improvement of in a certain di- 
rection, 65 

Index of, 62 

Management of, 60 

Rational, 72 

Training of, 73 

Verbal, 72 
Mental content, 85 
Mental second wind, 54 
Mental stock-taking, 265 
Milton, 70 

His vocabulary, 167, 264 
Mnemon, 18 
Mnemonics, 75, 81 
Montaigne, 68 
Moreri, Louis, 202 
Motors, 22 
Murray, Sir James A. H. 195 

N 

National Biography, the dictionary of, 

262 
New international encyclopaedia, 207 
Nones, 77 
Note-making and its forms, 223 

(a) Verbatim, 223 

(6) Long-hand, 227 

(c) Unsystematic or topical, 229 

(d) Analytical, 231 
Novel reading, 153 



Objective self, 4, 17 
Obliviscence, index of, 63, 222 
Observation, 24 

Observation stage, 142 
Old examination papers, 273 
Oratorice Institutiones, 19 
Organization of lecture, 234 
Over-fatigue, 46 
Over-pressure, 45 



Partnership in study, ill 

Pecker, 80 

Pecker, 80 

Periodic sentence in lecturing, 226 

Philekoos, 19 

Philepainos, 19 

Philomathes, 18 

Philoponos, 18 

Phlegmatics, 21 

Pierce, Gilbert A., 200 

Plato, 18, 179 

Poets, two kinds of, 165 

"Point" of an examination question, 

281 
Point of view in composition, 253 
Practical thinking, 107 
Practice-effect, 47 



Practice in note-taking, 233 

Preaching, 214 

Preferences of students, 24 

Preferred sense, 23 

Premises, 100 

Preparation for examinations, 268 

Priggish ness, 27 

Private student, the, 56, 112, 154, 

183, 185 
Problems, 91, 267 

Recognition of, 138 

Three stages in dealing with, 140 
Professors and students, 179 
Progress between lessons, 43, 66, 67 
Purpose, in listening, 213 

In reading, 173 

In seeking knowledge, 91, 173 



Quick wits, 20, 57, 157 
Quintilian, 19 



Raleigh, Sir Walter, 218, 221 
Rapid impression method, 56 
Rational memories, 23 
Reading, 24, 25 

Desultory, 171 

General, 170 

Leisurely, 164 

Lip movements in, 158 

Marking books in, 175 

Mechanism of, 156 

Possibility of increased rate of, 162 

Rate of, 157 

Relation between speed and ac- 
curacy of, 163 

"Silent," 159 

To acquire tone, 173 
Real living, 13 
Reflexion, 3 
Reflexive verbs, 3 
Reports, 256 
Republic, The, 17 

Research, the beginnings of, with 
illustration, 210 

The research method, 258, 260 
Rhyme and rhythm in mnemonics, 77 
Rhyming dictionaries, 197 

Geographies and histories, 7 
Robinson Crusoe, 226, 263 
Roget's Thesaurus, 190 
Room-sharing, 111 
Rousseau, 150 

Royal road to learning, 34, 138 
Ruskin, 234 



Sanguines, 21 

Scaffolding, 76, 77, 81, 82, 136 
School versus College, 32 
Schoolmaster, The, 17, 20 
Scott, 164 



289] 



Index 



Self, subjective and objective, 4, 7, 10 
Self -consciousness, 10, 11, 14, 26 
Self-educated, 28, 33 
Self-education, 28 
Self-esteem, 16 

Self-examination, 10, 14, 17, 26 
Self-expression, 8 
Self -questioning, 149 
Self-realization, 8, 16, 17 
Self -reference, 15 
Selfishness, 15 
Sensories, 22 
Shakespeare, 134, 171 

His vocabulary, 168 
Shelley, 134, 166 
"Shots" at examinations, 283 
"Silent" reading, 159 
Size of dictionaries, 193 

Of encyclopaedias, 203 
Skeat, Professor W. W., 167 
Skipping, 173 
Smith, Dr. Walter C, 154 
Socrates, 147, 148 
Socratic irony, 147 
Socratic method, 145 - ) M b 
Solon, 16 
Spencer, H., 84 
Steele, 225 

Stevenson, R. L., 257 
"Stock" questions at examinations, 

274 
Stock-taking, personal, 17 
Student's Manual, The, 137 
Student, the private, '56, 112, 154, 

183, 185 
Student's attitude towards lecturing, 
217 
Notes in relation to lecturer's 
notes, 236 
Students, external, 154 

In relation to assimilative and con- 
structive work, 91 
Internal, 154 

Two classes of, in relation to text- 
books, 183 
Study, acquisitive (assimilative) and 
constructive, 88 
In relation to physical comfort, 1 14 
The test of, 119 
Study period, length of, 50 
Style suited for lecturing, 226 
Subjective, 4 
"Subjects," 201 ■ 
Swing effect, 47, 49, 129 
Synonyms, dictionaries of, 199 



Tactiles, 24 

Taking stock of oneself, 16, 17 

Teacher, place of, between textbook 
and pupil, 180 

Teaching, distinguished from lec- 
turing, 214 

Temperament, 20, 116 



Tennyson, 164, 166, 172 
Textbooks, 24, 165 

Definition of, 178 

Distinction from books of refer- 
ence, 188 

How to use, 186 

Origin of, 178 

Retention of old, 187 

Two kinds of, according as sub- 
ject or reader is more prominent, 
184 

Versus teacher, 183 
Thackeray, 7, 98 
Thinking, practical, 100, 107 

The three stages of — thing, law, 
system, 134 

Without words, 167 
Thoroughness, 56, 135, 174 
Thring, Edward, 116 
Time, English and American, 81 
Time-tables, 35 

Danger of rigidity of, 44 

Evening, 37 

Order of subjects on, 42 
Todd, Rev. John, 137, 138, 139, 143 
Toga liberior, 1 
Toga virilis, 1, 32, 41 
Topical (or unsystematic) note-tak- 
ing, 229 
Translation, 241 

Illustrative passage, 246 

U 

Uccello, 207 

Unconscious cerebration, 67 
Unit in learning by rote, 71 
"Unseen" translation, 242, 245 



Verbal memories, 23 

Verbatim notes, 223 

Visuals, 23, 25 _ 

Vocabularies, the three, reading, 

writing, and speaking, 169 
Vocabulary of the English Bible, an 

educated Englishman, a Chinese 

historian, an illiterate peasant, 

168, 169 
Means of enriching, 170 

W 

Wagner, 52 

Webster, 195, 200 

Wells, H. G., 37 

Whirlwinds, direction of, 80 

Wits, quick and hard, 20, 57, 157 

Words, 162 

Work under fatigue, 53 

"Writing up" notes, 231 



Zeteiikos, 19 



[290] 



i24 



